Big problems with Compaq Presario R3000

Hey everybody,
I have a compaq presario R3000 laptop here that is having some trouble.
It all began when i downloaded a windows update about 4 weeks ago.
Immediately after I downloaded it the computer crashed and never let me back
into windows, even in safe mode. So I repaired with the windows OS cd and
reloaded all the drivers and applications and that was fine.. I didn't even
lose all my files. However at this point I had to leave for two weeks...
when I came back, I went to try and listen to some music and it wouldn't
even let me in the folder, saying access is denied (I have still not gotten
in there at this point). Then I tried to install Norton Antivirus 2005 and
that refused to install as well, even after multiple tries.
I was tired of all this, so I saved all the pictures onto CD's and was
going to just reformat the whole thing and start fresh but when I tried to
do that, I got a message saying it was impossible because the volume is in
use. I don't know what to do at this point...
Any help is appreciated, thanks a lot.

Justin

Oh, also, I lost everything a couple months before this as well when my
harddrive crashed and consistently failed both the short and long test, and
never let me back into windows again. Compaq supposedly replaced the
harddrive though.. I don't know if thats related to this at all.

Sounds like a drive read/write issue or bad sectors. Are you sure they
didnt just load the OS again? Were seeing major problems on these and
one is a hard drive failure just after warranty.. (Think its thermal
and voltage is spiking for the drive line).. Do you ever get a BSOD?
Let me know as we will see more I believe.. Ken