Debug WinXP machine with bootable Linux CD
 

One of my friends has a laptop running WinXP and is having possible hardware errors after the machine fell about 3 feet. Everything is running slower after this happened. He tried to run a scan for bad sectors with the disk utility that comes with Windows, but it gave some error like "Windows could not complete the scan."

First thing I thought of was damage to the hard drive, but I'm not familiar with Windows disk utilities.

I remember reading somewhere about using a Linux bootable disk for debugging problems on Windows machines. Does anyone know how I could use a LiveCD to debug an issue like this? If not a LiveCD, would a laptop running Linux have any good debugging options?

If you go to the manufacturer's website, you should be able to find a diagnostic disk you can download and burn onto a CD.