Fz21m -hdd Memory Or Nvidia Issue?

Hi everybody this is a great forum, am glad I found it!
I have a problem with my FZ21M and need to narrow down the faulty component.
Purchased from amazon uk in feb 08 and have had no problems at all with it.
Haven't used it in a few months and has been safely stored.
Last week I booted it up and all was fine but in the course of installing many microsoft updates it hung and after powering down would not boot into windows. I used the recovery software and got it back up and running. Checking the hard disk took forever with many errors. Still, seemed ok but then froze again on windows update. After another recovery process I found out I needed to install a couple of hotfixes before running windows update. Managed to get a fully functional laptop with vista sp2 fully updated.
Then I got the same problem again -system froze would not start on reboot.
However now even booting from the recovery disks I get past the loading files screen and just end up with a movable mouse cursor and no HDD activity light.
So, if anyone can help, what could be the problem?
TIA

 

You could have some bad sectors on your HDD. That would cause those problems. Have you tried backing up your stuff, then formatting your HDD and reinstalling Windows? If the new installation has the same problems, it's probably safe to say that it's the HDD.

 

I'm not sure how to go about formatting without being able to load the recovery disk. I tried loading a vista dvd but no joy there, either. Might try a DOS approach if I can find an old disk

 

Try the GParted Live disk. All you have to do is burn it to disk and boot from it. And you can do anything to your HDD you want, including a full wipe and reformat

 

I booted up UBCD v4.11 which has the fujitsu HDD diagnostic software on it. (Handy as fujitsu have left the HDD market and don't seem to offer any support). Surface scan test came up with a fault so likely HDD related.