WINNT directory disappears

My father recently upgraded from W98 to W2K and from dial-up to cable. Something entered his machine within days that caused restarts and hid the WINNT directory.

Reformatting (including deleting the old partition) did not solve the problem. A new hard drive solved it, however, the old drive was only a few months old. Any guesses as to what happened?

TNX
Doug

 

I'll place a bet it was a Seagate HDD In most cases it helps NOT to recreate the same partition size. Means put a small partition on the top before trying to create the system partition.

 

OK, I suppose the reformat could have gone wrong. Is it likely that the original partition/format/install of W2000 caused the disappearance of WINNT? Or is there a known virus/trojan that hides the directory and causes restarts?

I was not aware that re-partitioning a HD can kill it.