new hard drive installation?

Unfortunately you need the original discs that should have come with the laptop to reinstall the software.

If your other hard drive is truly fried and unusable, you have to have some kind of medium to install the applications from. There's no other location on your laptop where programs are stored.

Where did you get this laptop? All major manufacturers include system restore discs with their laptops. You would use these discs to recreate your boot partition when replacing a hard drive.

If you don't have these discs, you're going to need to get them. Most manufacturers can get you new copies of the restore discs (usually for a small fee) if you call the tech support line and register the serial number on your laptop.

If you have no discs and no way of ordering a recovery set from your laptop manufacturer, the only way you'll be able to get your software and programs back is buy purchasing them again.

**ADDENDUM**

If you received no recovery discs, welcome to the world of cheap $%&% companies. I know that Compaq has gotten around giving people recovery discs by putting a "create your own" recovery disc application on their laptops. Basically they save money by not giving you the discs... you are on your own in using this application to create your own set of recovery discs. Unfortuantely, most people don't even know they have to do this... and never are aware of the lack of discs until the worst case happens.

At this point the only thing you can do is call Compaq. You are going to have to buy a set of recovery discs from them. Hopefully they won't charge a lot for them... but even a small fee is less than the cost of buying a full verison of Vista for install.

And maybe if you call them and complain and threaten them enough, you can get them to send you a free set of recovery discs. Not likely... but I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

Call your laptop manufacturer. They should be able to provide you with a URL to download or purchase they originial install disks. Use a friends computer and DVD burner and you should be set. Generally:

1. Boot up the DVD

2. Run through the install process

3. Download any additional drivers or programs

4. Restore any data you had saved

If your old laptop drive is not fried, but the install is severely messed up. You might be able to use the old drive in an external USB drive enclosure to restore your data.

Good luck, I know you are frustrated!

Wel, this is elementary, as there is no application to place in in basic terms for the frustrating-tension (until this is a SATA now and back) take out the old frustrating-disk (broken one), place the recent one and screw or restoration it. rewire and connect it. whilst your pc boots, press Del to bypass to BIOS setup and enable the BIOS discover/understand your new frustrating-tension (verify the BIOS menu for the alternative). After that set Boot configuration interior the BIOS, and then save settings and go out. place working device CD/DVD interior the stress and boot and reinstall OS. (Incase of a SATA tension in some OS you're able to would desire to place in the SATA driving force at first of the OS set up)

If the HD is fried you can't.

Next time do a Backup