A friend of mine has just bought a new Advent laptop from PC World. She has had it for 6 days and got an error message saying she had an imminent HHD failure. She took it back to PC world and was told "It was her fault" they are suggesting that she "has been infected from the internet". They told her to format her HDD and restore factory settings.Unfortunatley she is not computer 'savy' and she had not made a rescue disk. I have managed to get into the recovery options and tried everything but nothing works. I finally tried the Destructive repair but part way through Stage 1 "preparing the HDD" it give the error "HDD not found" and I can get no further than this.I am running Vista and XP on my machines and do not have access to a Windows 7 disc (she did not get one with her machine). Is there any where I can download boot files to create a bootable disc?Or is there another option?

Total BULLS**T, threaten to take them to court or any other legal action. Ahh, I see a little google search shows this to be in the UK? Do you guys not have any consumer protection laws? hard drive is toast and the message displayed doesn't LIE. How in the heck do they know it was infected? Sounds like an inferior product. Who makes this laptop (be specific) make, model and model #. If this is the kind of customer service they give, DO NOT buy anything else from there. Totally poor excuse - go see the manager instead of those fools who barely know what they are talking about.MCSE, MCSA, MCDST [If this post helps to resolve your issue, please click the "Mark as Answer" or "Helpful" button at the top of this message. By marking a post as Answered, or Helpful you help others find the answer faster.]

Yup, I agree with cdobbs. The hard drive is dead. Most electronic devices will either fail early in their life or last for a long time. Take it back.

Hi, You can borrow a win7 installation disk or any other operation system disk to boot into system and run check disk to make sure if the HDD is corrupt.Or you can download the Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial ISO file, make a bootable disc and try to run the check disk.If the check disk returns result stating the HDD is corrupt, then replacing them is the only solution.

Hi GuysThanks for your replies and advice.I took my friend and her laptop back to PC world earlier today and spoke to the manager. He asked one of the "Techguys" to check her machine and it took him less than a minute to confirm the HDD was dead.She now has a new machine and I have just finished setting it up (Recovery DVD set & antivvirus installed). Hopefully this will be the start of a lasting and rewarding windows 7 experience for her.

VERY GOOD! I told you didn't I - I don't take that kind of ____ but I know she was intimidated by their "huff and puff" and that's a good manager and the techie knew he couldn't buff him. Next time get a Dell :) course it should be a more pleasant experience to be able to take it back to the store ONCE but as long as the outcome was satisfactory, that's all that counts.Hey I noticed the filters work on the forums - good job forum guys even if I said C R A P :) MCSE, MCSA, MCDST [If this post helps to resolve your issue, please click the "Mark as Answer" or "Helpful" button at the top of this message. By marking a post as Answered, or Helpful you help others find the answer faster.]