OS Problem

[VBBOY]

One of my friends has asked for my help in the following problem. After a low level formatting of the hard disk recently, he got windows 98 installed. All he has got in the pc right now is MSoffice. The problem is that windows hangs time and again. For a solution, he reinstalled 98. But the problem still exists. Windows still hangs. When he called me, i noticed an interesting thing. Most of the time( almost 90% times) it hangs while minimising or maximising a window. The problem is strange. Can someone tell me
1)what could be wrong with it?
2)Could it be a virus?
3)does low level formating remove virus from the boot sector?
4)is it possible to develop a software in vb that can detect problems in the os?

I m posting this in this forum because i know that there are many visitors in this forum that have a very good understanding of windows.

[Cakkie]

[Cakkie: moved from VB Forum to General discussion]

Usually, the boot sector is overwritten by the setup of most OS'es, including windows. So installing Windows would wipe away any information in there.

Also note that a low level format isn't something you should do to format a disk. A low level format is a very dangerous thing to do if you don't know what exactly you are doing. It will recreate tracks and sectors on the HD surface. Each HD can only adapt to specific settings (these are typically on a label on the HD itself), if you use other settings, you could wind up with a unusable HD.

About the problem with the computer crashing, you could try to do a complete update using the windowsupdate. If that doesn't fix it, I would do a complete format of the disk (regular format, not a low level), and reinstall windows 98. If that still doesn't fix it, you should check the hardware for failures, probably using an elimination process.

[lord loh]

I have queries regarding low level format...So, I posted a new thread at

http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=227888

So you can reply there or view some related information which may come up there...

Thank You!