is my hard drive dead?

so guys i need some help here. i booted up my PC today to find some errors on my screen the first being.
"A problem with the hard drive has been detected"
then i get prompted with the 'boot in safe mode, boot normally...' screen.
load to windows XP logo then a beautiful Blue Screen with the stop 0x00000024 error.

i did the most obvious stuff like unplugging, dusting, reconnecting stuff and nothing. im not very computer savy so any suggestions would be very helpful.

im also wondering if i buy a brand new HD and install windows xp on it so i boot from that, would my messed up HD be accessible as a slave drive? i would truly hate losing all my files and stuff from that HD because its been my only one for about the past 10 years now

If you want to be sure, you can boot to a CD or USB drive and run this program. It works on most brands of HDs.

http://www.hgst.com/support/downloads/

Depending on how bad it is, you should be able to plug the HD in as a second drive and get some data off it. I've had drives that wouldn't boot Windows but I allowed me to pull off everything I needed (porn). On the other hand, I've had drives that showed errors in the log files, still booted to Windows, but wouldn't let me copy and data (again, porn).

Its really a crapshoot sometimes.

no luck with that. i went ahead and ordered a new hard drive. i also need to buy an OS because that HD came with windows already installed, the disc i have says OS already installed on your computer, its a reinstall cd.

[quote name='sublime90']no luck with that. i went ahead and ordered a new hard drive. i also need to buy an OS because that HD came with windows already installed, the disc i have says OS already installed on your computer, its a reinstall cd.[/QUOTE]

You can install the new HDD and use the recovery disc.

ok thats good to know thanks.

ok so i took my precious time getting windows 7 and a new hard drive. the windows xp disc i had wasnt a proper install disc and it kept crashing when it was almost finished. my problem now is i cant figure out how to get out of that loop to install windows 7. no matter which disc i insert it keeps picking up where the failed xp install left off. how do i get out of that to start a fresh install with 7?

[quote name='sublime90']ok so i took my precious time getting windows 7 and a new hard drive. the windows xp disc i had wasnt a proper install disc and it kept crashing when it was almost finished. my problem now is i cant figure out how to get out of that loop to install windows 7. no matter which disc i insert it keeps picking up where the failed xp install left off. how do i get out of that to start a fresh install with 7?[/QUOTE]

Burn UBCD, start gparted from UBCD, delete all hdd partitions and then install windows.

thank you very much, that worked perfect