There could be a bad sector here as opposed to a faulty hard disk (becuase you can still use the hard disk) - which is basically a small part of the disk that is defective but even then i think its unlikely - can you do this for me when your not needing to use your PC for an hour or two as it could take a while - goto start -> run and type
cmd
followed by return.
A Black window will appear - click on it to select it and type
chkdsk c: /R
followed by return and see if it reports any errors (this is the bit that will take some time as it scans your hard disk). It may ask you if you want to do it on the next reboot as it cant "lock" the drive - this is normal and if so say yes then reboot your machine. This will locate any bad sectors on the drive and attempt to recover any data - i want to know if it finds any.
If there are none then its not a hardware issue.
PC World are being a bit on the slack side by telling you to use the recovery disk as if this was a hard disk issue then they should replace it and if its not then they should find out why this is continually happening.
If this happens again and the CHKDSK i asked you to do above comes back OK (i.e. no hardware issue) kick their ass as they should be trying to find out what the problem is and not just telling you to wipe your disk and start again.
If on the other hand the CHKDSK does not come back as OK then kick their ass anyway as they should replace your hard disk with a new one (post what it says here first though so that we can verify that it is indeed a bad hard disk), as this WILL happen again and you will be doing this again in a few months.
Either way - you should be kicking ass.
