Problem with my hard drive,please help?

Hi all,please give me some advise.Im not a big expert in dealing with computers so need some help.Let me explain what we have done so far.Our PC its HP with windows XP.We decided to change it to windows vista.We thought that with vista computer will work faster.We bought a new memory block as well,because vista needs more memory space.Our friend helped us to install a new hard drive.Im not sure what his plan was.I think he was going to use new hard drive as main and old one as additional one.After installing this new vista computer was not working any faster or better,so we decided to install vista xp back again.Every time I was restarting my computer the message was appearing on the screen-hard disc failure is imminent,back it up and have it replaced.We tried doing that but we can not,something is wrong with that old hard drive.Computer is not showing it at all,maybe it got damaged somehow.My question is how can we check if that hard drive is still working?And second question how can we in stall Windows xp back ?Do we have to copy it somehow to the new hard drive?Why this message about hard drive failer keeps coming up?Which of two drivers is about to fail?Sorry Im a bit confused.Advise would be appreciated.thank you.Problem with my hard drive,please help?
You should go to the website of your hard drive maker and download a diagnostic utility to check the health of your hard drive. It will be on the website under support. This must be run from bootable floppy, bootable usb, or bootable cd. Best option.

OR

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2

Runs from boot floppy or cd and will test any hard drive.

OR

http://www.hdtune.com/

Runs in windows will test any hard drive.

If the new hard drive is really new it is not likely that it would be failing, and if it were failing you could have it replaced.

If the diagnostic program say there is a problem with the drive do not use it, except for files you do not care if you lose.Problem with my hard drive,please help?
Most new HP computer come with a recovery partition preinstalled on the hard drive. You can try to boot to the recovery partition. If you are not able to boot to the partition, then the hard drive has physical damage and cannot be repaired.



To perform a recovery from partition:



Disconnect all peripherals and internal non preinstalled devices from the PC, except the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.



Turn on the computer.



When the initial blue HP screen appears, press the F10 key repeatedly until a recovery menu appears. The progress indicator that first appears does not indicate that a recovery is taking place. The progress indicator represents the time before the recovery process is started.



When the Recovery screen appears, click Next, and then click Yes to perform a normal, non-destructive recovery.

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