Firstly a ide hard drive will work on your computer unless theres a problem with the disc, if you can get into bios is that drive showing up, if not and it keeps crashing the computer theres a good chance theres a problem with drive or more likely jumpers are set to make it the master and computer is trying to boot from that drive instead of the drive with the operating system on it,

have you got a vista key normally theres a microsoft sticker on the case with five sets of, 5 numbers or letters,

can you get hold of a copy of vista or are you able to download a large program would probably take a couple of days to download, what was the reason for getting rid of vista was it corrupted or you just didnt like it (or was it slow)

If the computer will ruun vista it will probably run windows7 better, 7 needs less ram, if vista was running slow probably not enough memory, would take a week to upload a copy of 7.

if you live in a small town would probably be lot cheaper buying online tiger direct or newegg seem popular in us.

__________________
Q6600-P5K Premium+Alphacool w/blocks
EVGA 8800gt+Koolance w/block
Samsung f1 raid0 +f2 hard drives
Enermax infinity 650w

Popeye67's Blog