PC Hard drive problems

ive been having some hdd issues on my pc hopefully someone can help me out or point me in the right direction. when i boot up the pc i get a message saying "Warning a problem with the hard drive has been detected"

it then brings me to the Windows screen where i put my pass word in and i see my desktop for about 2 seconds before the entire screen turns black seeing nothing but my mouse cursor. on rare occasions my desktop stays up saying "windows explorer has stopped working, a problem has caused the program to stop working windows will close etc etc" and i cant do a single thing on the screen.

ive tried booting from the windows disc to reinstall or repair, no go. it either ignores the fact i set the bios to boot from CD drive or i keep getting prompts of ctrl alt del to restart, over and over.

tried booting up in safe mode, same thing.

any ideas?

I can't say exactly what's wrong, but if if were mine, I would get another hd and do a fresh install of the OS. After that's running, I would use a USB adapter to connect the old hd and pull any important files from it if possible. You're basically treating it like an external hd at that point.

If you want to save the hd, you could try and format/re-install the OS. But I rather just start fresh with a new one in case there's a mechanical failure.

More than likely one of two things and following what Boneless said will cure either.  Most likely your hard drive is failing or malware.  Could also be failing memory.  I've only had that happen once in 30 years though.  If you can get into the BIOS there may be an option to disable the fast memory check, though I haven't looked for that in years.

Now, there is the outside chance that it is something with the motherboard, but unless you did something - overclocking, liquid, power surge, etc....it probably is not that.

yeah i havent done anything to the motherboard it just started happening one day. i went ahead and ordered another hard drive so i can get a fresh windows install and see if i cant hook this failing HD up as a slave and hopefully salvage whatever i can. i mean i had that hard drive for 4 years so lots of stuff on there id like to see again. thanks for the input