I did some googling for the issue, to get the info on softwares available other than standard windows scandisk.
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_fix_a_ba...ard_drive.html
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1583&page=3
These two links can give you some info about the issue.
But my first question starts with whether this is your primary boot hard disk.
Second how much important data do you have on the hard disk.
One of the state in bad sectors is due to sectors gone curropt permanently and cannot be read. But certainly hard disk hasnt crashed and most parts can be accessed and read properly.
Generally if you have bad sectors and you are running on windows XP, it runs the diagnostic while booting and can even give you "blue screen of death"
When logged on to Windows run
chkdsk in command prompt.
This wil tell you if you got any.
then do
chkdsk /f /v.
Reboot your system. Now windows will try to repair when it boots.
If you have Norton System Works in it you can get Norton Disk Doctor.
Or in System Mechanic also there is disk doctor.
Other than these there are few other softwares which you can try on your own. After the repair do remember to run defragmentation of the hard disk.