New hard drive

By OP do you mean OS as in Operating System?

No you can't just download it, but if you have recovery disks you can use those on your new hard drive. If you have an OEM product key on the computer, you can use an OEM Windows disk to do the installation and use that key.

Yes i meant OS don't know what i was thinking...anyway i have a a recovery disk set that i made for my sony vaio, i tried to use it and it looked like it was loading the the acer notebook just turned off and when i turned it back on it gave me an install failure message......not sure what to do next?

You need a recovery disk that was made for the acer, or a regular Windows disk. You can't use disks made for different models when they are recovery media, they are made with specific drivers for specific models.

ok i had a windows xp home edition that came with my older gateway pc, it loaded then the notebook restarted and the Window home edition page pops up and looks like its going to load then the notebook just shuts off, so now when i turn it on it just gets that far and shuts down.

so am i gonna just have to buy an OS to install on this new HD!! cause i have nothing else that didn't come for another computer.

If that XP Home was made for the Gatway and not a generic OEM disk, you won't be able to use it. You can't use a recovery disk made for another computer, your drivers won't match up and Windows won't load.

You may be able to get to Safe Mode and install the correct drivers if you want to try that, if that does not work, you need to buy an OS or contact Acer for a recovery disk.

thanks for your help, looks like i'm gonna have to contact acer.   angie