I was getting a persistent popup stating that my hard disk on my laptop had some critical error and needed to be replaced or fixed. In the process of running disk checks and things, the laptop crashed and I have not been able to successfully boot it to desktop since. Now the laptop is less than 3 years old and has only been lightly used over those 3 years, so this is kind of a shit deal.

I'd rather not buy a new laptop altogether since there's no good reason for this one to be so borked this fast, but if I have to buy a replacement hard drive, I think I'll need to buy a new OS too, because the laptop came with it installed already and there was- to my recollection- no OS recovery disk provided to work with.

Could someone more in "the know" with this sort of thing explain my options or what steps I might take? The laptop is currently sitting in a corner running through a startup repair, but that doesn't seem like it's actually doing anything, and it's been sitting there a long time.

If you were using Windows 10, the license is activated server side and is confirmed by the hardware IDs from your motherboard.
So if you buy a new HDD you can just download Windows 10 legally from Microsoft's own page and install: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

If you're unsure what HDD to replace with, post your laptop's make and model (example: HP 8540w) so we can help you find one.

Win7

There should still be a hidden recovery partition on the HDD.
Whoever the manufacturer is should have a recovery disc, that can access the recovery partition, or might just have the whole original install on the recovery disc.

Win10 key should be located on the device. Check under the battery

Once found, buy new HDD + flash drive.
Replace old HDD with the new one
On other PC, create bootable iso with Rufus
Install OS to new HDD
Magic

This post was edited by Penguins0690 on Sep 4 2017 01:53am