So, my girlfriends laptop has a huge problem.

We get a "There has been a disc read error; press ctl alt del to restart" error upon starting her computer up. It just happened randomly over night...and I've read quite a bit about this error.

Its on her laptop, with Vista. Not many people have it on a laptop, let alone with Vista.

So, I THINK I've narrowed it down...I'm pretty sure her hard drive is shot. I looked it up on Dell's repair service, and it will cost "at least $150" and "$49" to even just tell us what the problem IS. >

I just want to buy her a hard drive myself, and install it myself. How hard is it to replace a laptop hard drive?

What if that isn't even the problem...then we bought a hard drive for nothing?

Do you guys think it would be cheaper to take it to a local repairmen, than it would be sending it away to Dell?