Recently, about a quarter of the times that I start up my computer (Winbook XL running Win98SE)), the hard drive cannot be found. When it does start successfully, it usually works for a while and then the blue screen starts popping up, saying that it was unable to write to the hard drive. It doesn't pop up when I'm saving things, generally, just at random moments when, I assume, changes are being made to temporary files.

Scandisk and defragmenting both seem to have a positive effect, but they don't actually solve the problem and (usually) no errors are found.

To me, it sounds like I need a new hard drive, but I wanted to check to see if anyone knew of something (less expensive ) that it might be.

Have you heard about "SpinRite" by Steve Gibson? You might take a look at his page.

I've used this for about 5 years and so far at least, the hard drive seems to be working great.

Also, you can go to the hard drives manufacturer's site and try their drive utility program. It should be able to tell you what the status of the drive is.

I hope something here helps!

Dwight