TSGL: eek! I think I'm about to have a HD failure!

[luminosity]

Hi y'all,

The other day I decided (I don't know now whether it was exceedingly 
foolish or seredipitously wise) to install a hardware check program, 
which I have since uninstalled (HDInspector).  I ran the check, and my 
three physical HD's came up--2 healthy, with a warning that my 250gb 
drive was running at 130 degrees, and I should buy another fan, and my 
C:drive came up as 100% working but "unreliable."   I'm not surprised.  
I have had that drive sans errors running for about 60,000 hours. So, 
today I buy a new hard drive and a fan, right?  But wait there's more!

The first problem popped up when I had to reboot my computer immediately 
after I got that message.  It usually takes Windows XP about 90 seconds 
to boot up.  This took ten minutes.  It did boot, though. 

The second problem popped up when I tried to switch to another user.  My 
husband and I have separate accounts on here.  I'm "me," and he's "you," 
easy enough.  His desktop wallpaper came up after over ten minutes, and 
then no icons or taskbar at all.  The task manager wouldn't even come 
up. So, I shut down.

I rebooted to last known good configuration.  Took *ages*.   Then I got 
a blue screen of death that I couldn't read at all because it flashed by 
so quickly.

Finally, after another ten-minute reboot, I was able to boot to my 
account.  I got a winlogon error (which I'm assuming could have been the 
BSOD error as well, but it's only an assumption).

I'm going to run a chkdsk now, and I'm backing up everything on my C: 
drive, and I do mean everything.

I've never (*stop laughing!* :)  ) had to restore a drive by myself.  
I've always just...started over.

My questions are:  Am I doing the right thing now?  Is it possible for 
me to *ghost* the entire drive to another healthy drive and have 
everything work, thereby not having to go spend $100 today on a new 
HD?   I have an 80gb drive that I could certainly split out into two 
virtual drives, right? 

I'm sure I have other questions that I'm too ignorant to ask right now, 
and I'm afraid that y'all are going to have every answer I need, but my 
HD will have died by the time y'all's help comes around.  So, just in 
case, I'm going to put my other address here, and when things settle, 
I'll just change my group mail address to gmail.

Thank you in advance,

Lum (luminosity.deville AT gmail DOT com)

OH! Here's what I have.

Windows XP Pro SP2
AMD Athlon 64 Processor
3200+
2.01Ghz, 1 GB RAM
Physical Address Extension (I don't know what that means)

Three physical HD's 40gb, 80gb, 250gb

Application errors this morning from my event viewer:

Windows cannot access the file C:\WINDOWS\system32\uxtheme.dll for one 
of the following reasons:  there is a problem with the network 
connection, the disk that the file is stored on, or the storage drivers 
installed on this computer; or the disk is missing.  Windows closed the 
program Microsoft UxTheme Library because of this error.

Program: Microsoft UxTheme Library
File: C:\WINDOWS\system32\uxtheme.dll
The error value is listed in the Additional Data section.
User Action

(I don't know what this is, but it came up three times)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fault bucket 00470146.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at 
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Faulting application winlogon.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module 
uxtheme.dll, version 6.0.2900.2180, fault address 0x0002ad65.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at 
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's everything I can think of, short of my home phone number.  :)  
Thank you again.