I've been playing havoc with my laptop for months, and at times my desktop also. Both are running Windows 7, FireFox (always the newest versions), MS Office 2003, Outlook 2003, and miscellaneous other software that have all gotten extremely good, clean ratings, etc. I run Crap Cleaner nearly every time I shut it down, and often do a Registry Scan also (saving anything I delete).

I run Malwarebytes AntiMalware, Avira Antivirus, and occasionally Spybot Search & Destroy. It's very rare that I come up with anything other than the occasional 'PUP' warning.

My FF and Outlook often end up "not responding" and I have to wait anywhere from 10 seconds to minutes for things to come alive again. When that starts happening I schedule and run a HDD 'CHKDSK' scan on start-up, which usually takes a few hours. There's often at least one bad sector in a file somewhere that gets repaired. I usually then run a 'Scan.pst' on the Outlook.pst file and repair that when called for (which is normal). Things than run good for a few hours to a few days and then we start the whole friggin' cycle all over again.

I can't tell if the HDD is going bad again, or I'm missing something on a scan somewhere, etc, etc...

Ideas or suggestions, other than to replace this 3 year old laptop, are welcome.

Whatcha think???

Thanks.