Kremit, how reliant are you on the Windows operating system?
Do you play lots of games or just a few specific ones... do you need MS Office (powerpoint etc.) for school? Do you need to run Photoshop? Or do you mostly use the computer for downloading, web browsing, music collecting etc. ?
If you have a friend who knows about Linux and can help you set it up and get the Nvidia driver installed (and JAVA and DVD playing etc), you might be happier using it than WindowsXP.
Again, this depends on what you need to do with your computer and which apps you need to run...
If you are even curious about something other than Windows (and the many, many problems that go along with it) download the Knoppix 3.3 Linux CD...
http://www.knoppix.org/ download the iso file and burn it to CD (write image).
It boots from the CD and runs in memory.... doesn't touch the hard drive. You can use this both to test the Linux OS as well as test the functionality of your computer's hardware... if it runs poorly, you have a problem with your motherboard, not hard drive.
Whether or not you replace the hard drive... if you like Knoppix you will probably want to download Mandrake Linux 9.2 (3 CDs) available at
http://www.mandrakelinux.com... it is the best distro for new Linux users as well as being the most well-rounded for typical users. You would be amazed at what you can accomplish with those 3 CDs.
