Confirmation, 2nd opinion

I have a terrible memory, but yesterday I had a hard shutdown due to a freeze. w7 home premium 64b install, 8g ram, 2.6 dual core, bout 6yrs old, cept for ram, hd. On powering on, chkdsk runs, but it keeps saying something to the effect of (unk. ~186k) file or block unreadable (terrible memory kicking in) Took a while for chk to finish, but it listed that expression several times. Win is on, but I can't generally load internet pages. Can't use explorer, it hangs forever. Can run WoW...

Can get google home page on chrome but won't then load any other page. Can get to gmail sign in, but then stops there. Two events of what does happen. Most web pages just don't do more than hang forever.

Avira AV was turned off when I first got on. Just now rebooted and see the notification for that again.

Sound & PC freezes like 1sec frequently though doesn't end in a crash or more than just a pause. Slowed/slower boot time and it seems to vary a bit in length.

As I said, WoW runs normally for me. I click a taskbar icon to load it.

I can open explorer through a folder or startW, but seeing inside a folder only sometimes works. Other times I can see into a 2nd lvl of the tree and then freeze. Explorer freezes happen, I just shut down explorer, and can continue with WoW. My entire D: drive appears to have been blanked. It had been the orig HD, with Vista as OS on it, and later just used as backup for my media library. I haven't been so far able to get a look into D, it either freezes or does the green search/progress bar.

I had orig. installed w7 upgrade to the hd(Was C: currently D drive) through Msoft's dl link on its site last april. I used a work around to not install a product and then w7 on top of it. Since my C drive at the time had passed its time, I had bought a new HD, and only wanted a clean w7 install on the new hd. through web research there was posted a way to trick the w7 install that it was fine, and not need a previous install of windows. (The former C was an oem vista 64bit. Moving to the new hd w/o the oem license or other win product on it, hope this aids clarity.) (That upgrade, ITS explorer crashed within 2 days of installation, thus the new HD, but carried out several months later).

The problems seem severe enough to basically forget any hope but to install both drives to a new system and use that to extract the media through a new os's explorer or a disc recovery program. Then toss the drives. I think I used phoenix last year, and will again. So realistically I'm looking for a confirmation, but hoping I could get around this issue with help, to more stabilize/restore the current machine and transfer at a later date. Putting off purchase a bit longer of a new machine, and avoiding the emergency recovery (phoenix) option. Peace of mind for my media, some of which been around a decade. Backup before now, meant on a separate, physical HD not attached to the OS. I hate the idea of backup device, as in something done in addition/external device. But I am tired of this and I've done similar or had similar worries multiple times in my years. Thanks for the help you can offer, I know time is valuable, which is why I'm not asking for anyone to spend the imagined? long time it might take to fix it, if possible even.

Erm, I think I mostly got that.
From the sounds of it, your hard drive is failing, and the RAM isn't helping either. The only option would be to replace the hard drive, and reinstall Windows. If the RAM is also that old, I'd suggest replacing it as well.

You also said you did an upgrade; don't. They're bound to be unstable.
For backing up data, I suggest a live Linux CD, with an external hard drive to copy the data to.

Ok, bout what I figured. Though this hard drive isn't that old, 8mos. I know they can be bad/fail early. Thanks for your thoughts

Another idea that comes to mind is that you may have malware or a rootkit virus. I would download and install the freeware version of malwarebytes and run a complete scan. If the product will not install or will not run once it is installed then it is very possible that malware is blocking it (they often try to protect themselves).

Further to the excellent advice by FC and TM. I'd run TDSSKiller in Safe Mode as well just to be on the safe side.

Makes sense due to AV being shut off. Trying Malware now, and will give tdsskiller a shot. New to me, not heard of prior to this. Thanks guys.

Tried both in safe mode, neither returned anything. So going with failing drive thought. Thanks again for the suggestions.