Has my hard drive gone bad?
We bought our desktop emachines computer with windows xp im guessing around 2003, 2004. It has always worked fine until recently when my younger brother downloaded a program called hypercam that messed up the computer a great deal. The computer had been running slow and had tons of old files we didnt need anymore so I did a Full System Recovery (destructive). The computer worked fine after that for about 4 months until about 2 days ago when the computer would not turn on. It would start up and go to a black and white page that said the computer had shut down unexpectedly and i had to choose between safe mode, safe mode with networking, or start windows normally with a coutdown at the bottom that said if I did not pick within 30 seconds, it would choose for me. the arrow keys would not move and the countdown froze at 24 seconds. i had to keep restarting the computer until it unfroze. I tried all the options and none would start the computer. So i did a full system recovery (backup) which puts everything into the my backup file and installs a new copy of windows. This worked fine until the next day when my mother came down to get on the computer and shoke the mouse so the screen saver would go away. Instead only a black screen showed up and would not go away. I tried everything and it would not unfreeze. Against my suggestion, they always restart the computer and shut it down using the power button on the tower instead of going to the start menu. I always heard this was bad for the harddrive but they always did it anyway. Do you think my harddrive went bad? It doesnt make a noise when it starts up or anything out of the normal. Would installing Windows 7 fix this problem? I would prefer to fix it myself instead of taking it in and paying someone else to fix it. any thoughts?

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How do I get my keyboard to register more strokes?
Right now, it can only register 2 strokes pressed at a single time. Is there any way I can increase this number? I'm on a laptop so a solution won't be easy as replacing the keyboard. I would be happy even if I could increase the number to 3 keystrokes at once. My OS is Windows Vista. (Will upgrading to Windows 7 fix this?)

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will upgrading fix this issue? READ CAREFULLY.?
It wont read any CD's and when I click on the drive in My Computer its says Application Not Found. Ive gone to Device manager and there is something there under the DVD/CD Drive section. (NN3330K BN0521P SCSI Cdrom Device). My computer is an Acer Extensa 4420 (laptop) and I have the basic Windows Vista. I have looked online and cant find anything. I tried going to Regedit and all that through H-Key and deleting Upper and lower Filters with no luck. Also I would scan for Hardware Changes in Device Manager and occassionally a new item would come up under the DVD/CD Drive section. (HL-DT-DVDRAM GSA-T20N ATA DEVICE) When this came up my dvd's would work but temporarily the movie would all of the sudden stop playing and my dvd player (Cyberlink) would crash and then the new drive item would be gone. Now that other drive is no longer coming up. I have tried unistalling and reisntalling the drive numerous times. I also tried fixing the problem through DriverMax but found nothing relating to the DVD Drive there. SO WILL UPGRADING TO WINDOWS 7 fix this? or what else can I do (besides take it to a shop)

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