Question about my laptop?

I'm using it at the moment, and it has 5 mb worth of bad sectors. My mate and I scanned the hard drive with two software packages and discovered that the bad sectors were input/output. Meaning, my hard drive is going to crap itself soon.



Anyway I went Leading Edge Computers near my place and the guy said he could do me a deal for 256 bucks to replace the hard drive. Blow that idea, too expensive. So the alternative is to send it back to the manurfacturer but I don't want to do that, even under warrently, because it will take at least a fortnight to get it repaired. I also want to downgrade from Windows Vista to Xp because I've had nothing but problems with it. Mostly compatibility issues as such.



So my question is what should I do in this situation? I don't know how long my hard drive will last, and that problem doesn't really seem to be affecting anything I use. The problem mainly comes about when I install updates. Can I buy a hard drive and install it myself? I'm going to void my warrenty anyway by putting Windows Xp on there anyway.



What do you think?Question about my laptop?
If you really encounter too much problem with Vista, downgrade to Xp is sensible.



Buying a hard disk is relative cheap nowadays %26amp; installing it can be pretty easy but make sure you have all the relevant disc for installation. Read your computer manual before you start the process.



Good luck!Question about my laptop?
Laptop HD's pop right out, easy peasy. I buy them all the time on ebay.
Yes u can if it's a famous brand of laptop. If not then ur screwed. If it's popular brand then u can find good hard drives or processors for it and search youtube.com or metacafe.com on how to put hard drives in and out of your laptop.
It probably will void the warranty to replace the hard drive yourself, but consider... will you EVER use the warranty if your not going to use it now? I'd just replace the hard drive myself, its not hard and it you need service work done later they probably won't even say anything unless its obvious you broke something in the install
Yes you can, although 5mb of sectors bad in a ???gb system isn't much. While your doing this you might want to upgrade the speed and size of the HDD. You will need a retail ver winXPpro with key(32 bit is more stable with wore software options). Since the retail ver only has the basic drivers you will have to chase down drivers for some of your systems hardware.
Sooner or later Microsoft will pull the plug on Xp. Vista is here and you will have to learn to deal with it. Honestly i find it much more stable than Xp was. Changing operating systems is the worst thing you can do to a PC. How on earth did you get bad sectors on a Vista PC anyways? Never mind i do not even want to know. You are too rough with the poor machine.