Okay, I'll try to make this as short as possible. With the introduction of a brand new hard drive (maxtor 20gb for backup) from a respectable company, my current drive (maxtor 80gb) began running REALLY slow. This was to the extent that it normally gets about 25000-30000 in Sisoft Sandra but it got 3300 when I tested it last. I pulled the drive and requested and RMA as I tried everything I could think of and it always ran the same. Now, however, I loaded XP on the 20gb for the time being and it's beginning to do the same thing. My first (and current) thought was a boot sector virus. The first thing I wanted to try to do was to rewrite the mbr but, now, when I try to boot from a floppy, it's no go. I tried this with a ghost floppy, a maxtor floppy, a PMP floppy and a Win98 floppy and none of them will boot. Mind you these have never had a problem booting before. Likewise, when I am in XP and open the floppies, it tells me they're not formatted. I've scanned with a fully updated AVG and nothing. Any suggestions?