Unfortunately, from the information you provided in your first post, it looks like a new hard drive is what you need. My experience with PC components is that if they are going to fail, they usually do so soon after you get them (within the first 3 months). Otherwise, they usually last at least long as they are supposed to, usually years. As I mentioned, if this system is under warranty, I'd certainly make the supplier check the system out and get it working. You didn't mention if it was purchased locally or from a mail-order or internet supplier, but either way, if it is under warranty I'd make them help you out. Remote diagnosis via VirtualDr is no substitute for a technician with physical access to the PC.

If you want to run another test, there is one more thing you can try. If you have a boot diskette with the DOS version of scandisk on it (you can search for scandisk.* and copy all files found to the boot floppy) then you can do a surface scan on the hard drive. If your previous scandisk attempts froze the PC, this will probably do the same. The only other possibility that I see at the moment is a bad drive controller on the motherboard, and that is not as likely as a bad drive.

Post any additional data you may find, in case anyone else has any other ideas regarding your problem.

Good luck.