dell problems

[u-9600]

So, my mums laptop(inspiron 1545) was dropped and the hard drive failed. I replaced the drive and installed a different version of windows vista to what it came with(no recovery CD and the recovery partition was on the dead HDD). However, the install was useless - random and repeated crashes, hangs etc. It would also not install any windows updates, got to configering updates stage 3 of 3 - 100% then hangs.

I then formatted the drive and then re-installed windows, however, the issues are still there...and i'm at a loss as to what else to try? Anyone got any ideas?

RAM problem?

thanks

 

[u-9600]

I've done that, and followed dells exact order for installing them. No difference...