My laptop pauses.

[sLk]

For some strange reason my laptop pauses.
When it does the hardrive light comes on and the cursor freezes along with any applications that may be running at the time.

It's a Compaq Presario 2100 running Win2k Pro.

I should mention that this is happening after 2 reformats after what may have been a virus that infected the system.
I've run all the virus/trojan scans I can find since reformatting and came up with nothing.

[sLk]

I don't know if this will help but it originally came installed with XP Home.

[Tebore]

Got a wireless card in there?

I noticed that when my old laptop drops a connection which was also a Compaq 2100 series is it would lock up till it reacquired the signal.

[sLk]

It has built-in wireless g.
I don't think that's it tho because it will happen even when connected via a wire.
I updated the bios with the newer one available on Compaq's site.
No improvement.
Have you ever heard of a virus that corrupts the actual bios or harms hardware?
Cause that's what I think may have happened.
Or am I just being paranoid?
Thanks.

[sLk]

I pulled the RAM out and re-installed it.
Same with the hardrive.
Seems to have fixed the issue.

[sLk]

Darn it's back again.
I read in the manual that it may be the "windows swap file" that may be causing this.
Would modifying the swap file help the issue?
How do I modify the swap file?

Thanks.

[walaka7]

Actually it sounds like the hard drive is failing :/ perhaps running hard drive utility from the manufacture is in order. good luck