quick update,due to the disgraceful and inept people at pcworld,he decided it would be far less hassle for me to go and buy him a HDD from an independent retailer and install it,ive reinstalled windows 7 using my own disk (with his product key),everything seems to be running fine,,i did warn him not to go to pcworld in the first place,but you live and learn,plus he's happy enough to have a fully working laptop,,thx for the replies.

hi,just wondering if anyone could give me a little advice on behalf of a friend. he bought a toshiba laptop around 8 months ago and the hdd is starting to fail,when switched on,it takes a long time to load up,when it does get to the home screen,it comes up with a message stating "Windows detected a hard disk problem",it gives 2 options,"start the backup process", or,"Ask me again later". fortunately,there is nothing he is concerned about losing on the hdd,as it is all on an external hdd,,so my question is this---can he go to the pcworld store where he bought it and expect a free repair and probable replacement if faulty? i've had personal experience with pcworld with products still under 12 months warranty,none of it good,so he will have to go to the store without me,as i will shout at the top of my voice if i get the usual reaction of 'oh,its not down to us,you have to contact the manufacturer yourself',yada yada yada and so on,which quite frankly is b***s***. so if i can tell him that he is entitled to free repair(with rights on his side)he can go to the store and leave it in the capable(lol) hands of pcworld. sorry for the little rant,but i have absolutely no time,or respect for pcworld or their staff,i did warn him about buying from them,but he made his own choice! thx for any help offered on this subject.