Broken or not broken hard drive?

[romanstopme]

Got a laptop from a friend with a busted screen. Bought a new screen and put it on works great turned on the pc booted up fine i went to re install windows home because it had to much crap on it. Pc formatted the hard drive but when installing the windows i got the blue screen of death saying windows has stopped working to prevent any more damage. but when i turn on the lap top windows cannot find the hard drive and just keeps on searching for it. Is this due to a hard drive failure or something with the pc more serious? Its a hp pavilion dv 4000 with windows xp home edition. Also when i turn the pc on and try to change where the pc boots from it just gets stuck on a screen that says its checking system components or something of that sort like bios shadowed. can any one help?

[disturbed1]

The hard drive manufacturer will have tools available for download to test the drive out. These are self booting live cdrom images that put the drive through it's paces, and tells you the status report.

[Nelson37]

The delay at boot could be because of the partially installed OS. Try waiting an extended period of time, may need as much as 15-20 minutes or more. I also would try a live boot CD, use that to test the HD.

The busted screen indicates possible abuse, also an older model. Might be useful to test the drive in a desktop PC, this would require an adapter but those are farily cheap.

[Ozzyjim]

You could always try Linux, I have a desktop motherboard that will let me install xp fine - just will not boot it. Linux works a treat on it though.... Dont ya just love technology