I needed to know if software can cause a bad sectior on a harddrive and if it does all you should have to do is format the drive right? and the last question is has anyone heard of Wincustomize.com messing up computers..

Thanks

i think it is highly unlikely software can damage hardware, i've only heard of one virus (a long time ago) that could do something like that...

u 'fix' bad sectors by running a thorough scandisk, but start saving some money for a new HDD already

Bad sectors are through drive errors, when the head actually hits thedisk by accident. Keep an eye on the number of them, a couple isn't bad but if their numbers increase, backup your data quick.

Scandisk doesn't really fix them, it just marks them unusable. Do as J said & start saving.

Garth

Thanks for the advice. I called Maxtor and they told me that they would replace the bad drive.

Oops, forgot to ask you if it was still under warranty

This is why I ALWAYS recommend MAXTOR; I had a 6.4GB HDD from Quantum (before they merged) that died on me and it was still under warranty; Maxtor/Quantum replaced it with a 30GB HDD! How cool is that?

Too bad they couldn't replace the lost data