PC - Primary Hard Disc Failure....?

[craigIS]

So My secondary computer seems to have crapped it's pants again.

Dell Dimension 2350. Windows XP.

I was performing a virus scan using Norton Internet Security. Norton froze, and stopped responding. Of course I open task manager, and end program. then, my computers CPU usage and RAM usage peek out for about 20 minutes. Tired of this, I try to restart the computer through the start menu, but the computer is lagged out so bad, it won 't do anything. I then try to hard boot the comp. Nothing happens, after several attempts, still nothing. I decide to take the side panel off to see whats up inside. i remove the button, and find there is a crap load of dust preventing me from pressing the button. I clean the dust,out.

During this time, I get a blue screen saying windows has been shut down to prevent damage, blah blah blah.....just the usual. I hard boot the comp, and it comes back on but doesn't boot Windows. The screen now reads "Primary Hard Disc Failure". I go to the boot menu, to boot Windows that way, and when I try to do so, the screen just reads my mac address.

WTF is going on here?

I was going to back up my files tomorrow, in case this kinda thing happened again, but I didn't make it that far.

Any ideas as to what can be done, or what is wrong?

Thanks in advance.

[Bullet Ride]

Take it out and put it in another computer as a slave drive see if you can access your data. If so, back it up and then reformat the drive. If not, I don't know.