If it's a post-HP era Compaq, you should have a recovery partition, which is usually accessible by pressing F10 or F11 at the Compaq screen. In the recovery console, you may have access to diagnostic software (HP includes it on newer computers, but I don't know about one that age) where you can run diagnostic tests on the hard drive, memory, CPU, etc. If you have this option, run a full diagnostic.
If you choose to do a system recovery, it will format the drive, which will erase everything on the C: partition, and reload Windows along with all the other pre-installed software.
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