Would a corrupted hard drive partition stop me from installing Windows?

[TechnoCorruption]

I am wondering if a corrupted hard drive partition would stop me from installing Windows? I have a laptop that no longer gets to the desktop, the response from the shop I bought it from is that I have to buy recovery disks.

I thought I would test if I could load my own copy of Windows 7 on and it fails to do that, it gets to the end of the copying files part and then crashes. My initial thoughts are that the hard drive is a goner but the shop are still 50/50 whether it can be saved by them recovering it from disk.

If it could be saved by recovering it from a recovery CD then surely I should be able to wipe the drive and install Windows 7 myself?

 

[Priapus]

Yes, you should be able to just wipe the drive and install Windows 7 onto it.

what is the error that you're receiving at the end of the setup?

 

[TechnoCorruption]

It didn't come up with an error, just crashed. Since the problems started the computer has felt really sluggish whenever the hard drive is in use. I can still see the hard drive listed in the bios and I can boot from it but nothing happens after that.

The computer is really random with how it is acting, sometimes when you turn it on it will come up with a screen saying that I can either repair or boot with normal settings, other times it just hangs on a blank screen.

I have selected both the repair option and boot normally and neither gets me to the desktop, when selecting repair it loads for about 5 minutes and then comes up with a screen that looks like its in 2bit colour and takes a long time to get through the menus. Selecting boot normally it gets to the main windows screen with the bar that goes left to right, I left it for 5-10 minutes and it gets no further.

I am taking it into the shop tomorrow and they said they will refund me if it is a HDD fault or charge me if they can recover it from a CD, I am just trying to make sure I haven't overlooked anything.

 

[TechnoCorruption]

I have just double checked to make sure that there is definitely no way of getting this computer running again. I am getting a little concerned that I will get to the shop tomorrow and they will come out with some excuse story and try charging me for it.

So from turning on the machine I have tried 4 different things, after each of these things fails I have to turn off manually by holding the power button, and then turn back on again.

1)- I boot up and am given the option to load windows normally or attempt repair. I chose attempt repair and after approx 5-10mins of loading I get to a screen that asks to select which os to repair, there are no options listed.

2)- I try to load windows normally, after 5 minutes of the windows bar going left to right - the screen goes blank. After a couple more minutes the restore menu loads up, it then brings up the same blank menu as mentioned above.

3)- I boot from a Vista HP DVD, the 'loading files screen' completes and then I am presented with a blank screen, nothing happens for the next 10 minutes.

4)- I boot from a W7 HP DVD, the 'loading files screen' completes, I then get the screen that says 'starting windows' the one with the swirly coloured dots that make up the flag. The screen goes blank and again nothing happens for the next 10 minutes.

Now in my opinion this can only point to a hardware fault, and it seems to be the hard drive that is the culprit. I can't think of any other possibility that would cause the above problems?

Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to make sure I had double checked everything.

So anyone think it could be anything other than a faulty component?