Dell Inspiron 1520 hard drive crashed... did motherboard crash also?

I apologize in advance if this topic is not in the right forum. I am having serious issues with my Dell Inspiron 1520 with XP 32bit Media Center Edition. I bought a Seagate 500gb/7200rpm hard drive about 6 months ago and got a message this morning saying "read failure on internal hard drive". I am pretty sure it died as I've slaved the hard drive to another computer and it's not being recognized but the motor is still going. On to my main question here.... How do I know that it's not the motherboard that has gone out? I've been having problems here lately with my quickset drivers as well as my video card drivers but I thought that problem had been resolved. I've also been infected with countless virus's and trojans as of late even though I have anti-virus programs/malware programs. I had the "google redirect" for the past month and was finally able to get it off just Saturday. My motherboard crashed about 2 years ago and was replaced under warranty. I've read that the motherboards in this particular model are crap.

I am worried about my motherboard as I put another hard drive in the computer and I just kept getting BDOSs but it was too fast for me to see an error code. This hard drive is configured for Vista 32bit and is for a different model Dell and different motherboard so I am not sure if that would make it not work.

My second question would be if I had to replace my motherboard would I have to go back with OEM equipment or could I upgrade it and how would I go about seeing what is compatible?

Any help is much appreciated as I am not so great with hardware problems!
 
There's no reason to think it's the board.
Did you make a warranty claim on the drive?
Did you install XP on the replacement drive, or just try to use it as is? A repair install may solve the problem, but a clean install would be better.
 
Thanks for the response.

I did make a warranty claim with Seagate and have not received a new drive yet. On this now broken hard drive I actually just cloned my old drive on to the Seagate. I had the OEM one which was a POS and it died a few months ago after the replacement was put into use. I actually don't have any of the original software (Vista 32bit) that came with this computer so I am not sure how I am going to get the new drive up and running and just may be SOL and have to buy the new WIN 7 operating system.
 
Check the Dell website for Windows 7 drivers for your 1520 first. I think you will find that Windows 7 is not supported (because there are no W7 drivers for it). It might be possible to find other drivers that might work but be aware that you might have to work hard to find them.
 
i don't think its you motherboard, but for the sake of you assuarance try your motherboard on a different machine, but one thing for sure it will definately work fine.
 
Hey Mailpup, I did do my homework on that end and it does look like it will support it. I just think I may come into trouble upgrading it to a 64bit, which is what I want to do. It's kind of crazy that there are no drivers for Win 7 for a lot of them. I don't remember coming into this problem when upgrading to XP and Vista.

Fifty, honestly, I know a lot about computers... at least I thought I did until now... and I don't know how to do that, at least not on a laptop. My other laptop is a Mini 10 so I don't think I will be trying this. Desktops are so much easier :)

This machine has been a piece of crap from the beginning. I'd love to just throw it out and get another one.
 
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