My Dell Dimension 4450 is almost 4 years old. We only use the system for internet, email, iTunes, Word, Money, and low level Excel applications. Yesterday the hard drive BEGAN making strange clicking sounds and it will not LOAD WIN XP Home in any mode. I booted from the XP CD that came with the computer and ran CHKDSK several times. After getting anywhere from 14% to 27% of the way through the scan it says that the disk is not fixable and/or that most of the segments are unreadable. I am fairly certain that my hard drive is a gonner.

IIRC Vista is coming out in about 6-8 months. Should I buy a new hard drive and re-load Windows and my other programs (assuming I can do it legally--not sure WHETHER the software licenses allow me to load them on new hard drive even when the old one is toast), or buy a new computer now and then upgrade to Vista later? Assuming I can reload my software on a new hard drive I'm inclined to buy a new hard drive and go until I need to upgrade to Vista in a couple of years. The rest of the system seemed to working perfectly prior to this and the system runs my applications very well. I would otherwise have no reason to upgrade to a new system.

I probably have lost data but that's another issue.

Any advice is appreciated.It sounds like all that is bad is the hard drive. There is no sense in trashing a system for that when a replacement is well under $100, eweasy to install and can legally loaded with your legal XP CD. no doubt you will need more if you plan on running Vista, but what is the point of that if your system works just fine for your uses?

if you need hard drive replacement help, that is available. I am certain that yours is iDE, so get one with 120 gigs or less and you will have absolutely no problems at all.

Here's one for <$60 delivered to your door with a 5 year warranty. You may find some even cheaper locally, but with a REBATE hassle.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148095

You can also get a bigger drive for not much more.thx for the advice.