reinstalling operating system

[JHADD]

A friend brought her computer to me it won't boot up just a flashing cursor.
Im not sure what the operating system is she can't give me any details about the computer.
When I try to reinstall Win Vista or XP the computer crashes with a blue screen telling me to run chkdisk.
Ive done this running a UBCD4WIN boot disk it shows no fault on the hardisk, ive also formatted the partitions using this disk.
My only knowledge of the computer is its a Toshiba laptop with a Pentium CPU., I think it was running WIN Vista originally.
Thanks for any help jhadd

[patio]

chkdsk is not included in UBCD...what exactly did you run ? ?

[JHADD]

Sorry it's not chksdk one disk check and the others check disk

[patio]

Find the HDD manuf. and DLoad and run their Free HDD diagnostcs on it.
Follow the guide for creating a bootable CD and run the long test.

[JHADD]

Right thank you i'll have to try that later im away from the computer for acouple of hours