Windows 7 very slow startup and hard drive clicking

Hi, Day before my laptop froze while watching a movie, so i put it off and restarted and then start-up took about 15 mins. its was freezing every few seconds with click noise which i think its from the hard drive. Now im currently using it on safe mode with networking.. its working fine but sometimes its freezes up for a couple of mins. the clicking noise comes on

Whats my issue? faulty hard drive or ive hit a malware? ( i was messing with some usenet stuff )

If i ive to format, how do i do it? Laptop originally came with vista ultimate but recently i send it for repairs to repair the dvd drive and the guy put in windows 7 ultimate for me, which i assume is a fake copy. So how do i format and i dont have the cd as well.

 

First do a backup of any files on your system that are important to you.. depending on how much stuff you have a USB stick or external drive may be needed. Clicking along with freezing often indicates a drive that is near failure but not always. Once backed up go to the Maufact.'s site and download and run any tools they provide to check the "health" of the drive.
If the drive checks out good, run a virus scan in safe mode and maybe a malware scanner ( Malwarebytes) MWB has a free version that you can install, update and run is safe mode.
If you end up needing a new drive you may have to bit the bullet and buy a copy of windows or consider a free OS like linux (with most disto's you can download and .ios, create a bootable CD or DVD and try it without installing . I recommend Ubuntu 12.10

 

If it's not the hard drive, it's probably a fan. Those are really the only components with moving parts. But since you described the freezing, it sounds like the actuator arm in the hard drive is having problems. Go with JOSEA's advice: backup your data ASAP if you have anything you need to save, and run any number of hard disk testing utilities to check the health of the drive. Even if it doesn't show up as bad or unhealthy, there's a possibility that the motor or actuator arm is failing, and software won't always relay that sort of information to you; most if it is really more designed to assess the integrity of the platters themselves.

 

I'm with Josea on this one. The drive constantly clicking could be a sign that the heads are unexpectedly parking. That's a dead indicator there is at least one bad sector on your drive volume. Less likely is that the headers or the drive controller are going bad. Back up your data as soon as humanly possible. As for formatting, IF the problem is a bad sector, you will know very quickly when you try and format as the drive will get stuck on trying to format the bad sector.

 

agree. even one bad sector can totally mess up your drive. i had it early last year with one bad sector and it was a nightmare. all the symptoms OP mentioned plus blackSOD/BSOD/software crash/10-15 mins boot up then freeze.

download and run HD Tune from my signature below and do a sector scan