Dell laptop's HDD died, silly question about replacing it

[just Scott]

So I have a Dell Inspiron 1764 and it seems like the HDD is completely dead. I can't get past the initial splash screen with the Dell logo, blue bar and F2 for setup and F12 for boot menu. It crashes on this screen after maybe 3 seconds so I can't even get to the BIOS.

My silly question is can I just get a replacment hard drive and install a fresh copy of Windows on it like a regular computer? I have absolutely no idea about laptops, but I know they all deal with all this recovery software and proprietary stuff that I have no clue about.

Cheers

 

[Llamaman]

I'd have thought should make it to BIOS without a HDD. In a desktop it'll normally go to BIOS then beep at you to say no bootable disk detected.

Likely to be another problem - are there any warning beeps etc? Could be a dead battery?

 

[escape sanity]

I'd have thought should make it to BIOS without a HDD. In a desktop it'll normally go to BIOS then beep at you to say no bootable disk detected.

Correct. My Dell XPS 17's HDD died just last week and that is pretty much what it did. But to answer the OP's question, yes you can just get a regular 2.5" HDD and install a clean version of Windows on it.

 

[CEUOTC]

Any 2.5" x 9.5mm HDD will do and as stated by escape sanity a fresh install from with either a DVD (Vista/XP) or USB flash (W7/W8) (Depending on what was originally loaded by Dell) drive using the key on the bottom of the laptop and you are good to go.

 

[House]

Some dells are funky with drivers for the hard drive controllers, ive had a couple where you have to use their 3rd party SATA driver but this was older machines.