More misunderstanding and lack of clarity on my part. They threw it (broken drive) in a spare box (box of spare drives), and gave me what I hope was a new one (new, non-broken drive).

@Recondomoe: I was about be like “Why” but then I was like “ohhhh”

In the end, it was replaced as it was under warranty and the tech guys didn’t know why it failed. They threw it in a spare box and just gave me what I hope was a new one.

I guess your phrasing about the hard drive needing to be “replaced” was the reason why i understood it the way i did. A better term would have been reformat/reimage. But i, like yourself, use windows even though it does have its ample shortcomings.

I never said that SP3 literally killed the physical drive. I installed SP3, and the next day the hard drive was unreadable. The tech people could not find any file format on it – instead, there was just an unintelligible mess of data. The tech people were unable to restore it. All they could do was wipe the drive. The only thing I can assume is that SP3 somehow messed with the hard drive.

I like Windows. I didn’t like losing games, music and other files, but I will stick with XP.

As much as I love a good Windows bashing session, an operating system has no effect on the physical integrity of your hard drive. That my friend was just a coincidence. Im sure you can find plenty of valid arguments against Windows that you dont need to go making stuff up.