My daughter bought her laptop two years ago and a couple of days ago the HD failed. The machine had Vista (ugh) pre-installed and she cannot find the disks that came with the laptop. As a test I put my Win7 HD in the machine and it booted up to the Windows splash screen but errored out after that. I have been told that Vista machines have hardware specifically made for Vista drivers so you can't go back to XP. Do I need to replace the failed drive with a Vista drive or buy Vista (double ugh) and do a fresh install? Thanks for the help.
First ..... make sure the hard drive actually failed mechanically. Most people have a software issue and they think it's a hardware failure. The same way everyone calls spyware a virus. I call it the PC Drama Factor.:jester: Hard drives aren't operating system specific. You can use any hard drive and you load whatever OS you want. Hardware Drivers may be a problem as you go backwards in versions of windows. Post the Manufacturer and the model # of the laptop. Be specific with the entire model number, sometimes it's on the case but the complete number is usually on the bottom on a tag. When you post the manf/model info, I can give you directions on how to reload the OS from the current hard drive if it's only a software issue. I also have quite a few back up disks for laptops. If I have yours, you are welcome to use them if you do need a new hard drive. You will need the Windows 'Key' numbers to use them. It's on the Certificate of Authenticity sticker on the bottom of the laptop. If I don't have the disks, check ebay for "(your full model #) OS replacement disks". Most are around $20 to $30 and come with the driver CD. Remember these disks are very very very model # specific. Make sure you've found the right one before purchasing. Hope that helps.
There really shouldn't be any reason you couldn't buy a new harddrive and do a complete fresh install of Windows 7, however when you look at the price of the hard drive, the price of the software and time involved, you might just be better off buying a new laptop especially with what some of the newer cheaper ones are selling for.
ddrdan - If it is a virus (my first suspicion), what program can I use to run to get it to boot? I can't get into Windows so it would have to be something I can run from a command prompt. I haven't tried getting into the BIOS, but if I can I change it to boot to cd and then run an AV program from there. I really am looking to get out of this as cheaply as possible so the cheaper the program the better. I currently use AVAST on my laptops. I am currently out of town and will return on Friday. I can post the info you requested then. craig - You make a very good point and I am definately taking that into consideration. I've been surfing Craigslist to try and find something economical. Thank you both very much for your help!
Example, Tigerdirect has a 120GB SSD for $80 today and a 64-bit Windows 8 os for $90 today for a total of $170 plus shipping and your time of loading and reloading all the needed programs.
Download the (??brand??) hard drive CD Boot diagnostic program while your on the road. Burn it to a CD and run that when you get home. That will confirm whether the drive is bad or not, and it's the starting point for the diagnostic. Once you know "drive good - drive bad", and the unit will post, it's a simple matter of finding your models keystroke to reload the OS and drivers from the backup partition. If the drive is faulty the OS load will fault. That's why I need the manf. #, all of them use a different keystroke. Or, you can actually look that up yourself? Now, that fail-safe all depends on the hope that the backup drive data hasn't been moved, erased, etc.. People screw up the backup drive data all the time because they have no idea what that extra partition is for ............... so they delete it.
