Which Version of Windows?

If you purchased from Toshiba, they should be able to look up the Purchase Invoice and which Windows License was on the laptop.

It's win7 64 bit home premium oem
I'm running seatools for DOS at the moment in the hope that I'll be able to repair the HDD enough to boot it to create a restore disk with the Toshiba tool provided. The one they want to charge me 30 quid for. Fingers crossed.

repair it enough to get into windows and get your License Key,
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/productkeysactivation/ht/windows-7-key.htm


replacement key from MS is only $10.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/osproductkeys/ht/windows-product-key-replacement.htm

I've bought a hotswappable HDD 'Icybox' for £22, it takes 2.5" and 3.5" hard disks and has both Esata and usb 2.0 connectors. Could have bought one with USB 3.0 but as I have an Esata port on my case I didn't think is was worth the extra money. Working like a charm. As soon as i booted my machine with the offending drive it gave the 'one of your drives needs to be checked for consistancy' message and automatically ran chkdsk. Never thought I'd ever be pleased to see that message!. Anyway I didn't see the results of that one as by the time I came back into the room it had booted intp windows, so I'm now running another checkdisk from within windows with the 'Scan and attempt to repair bad sectors' option ticked. Fingers crossed. Regardless of the result I have the feeling I'm going to get my moneys worth out of the HDD dock. Thanks for the tip.
Boko.

Start, Event Viewer, Windows Logs, Applications, Look for Chkdsk.
or open Admin CMD box CHKDSK x: /F > x:\CHKDISKLOG.TXT (X: Problem Drive Letter).
that should have data regarding the disk scans.

not sure if PEI environment scans are logged though.

Aha! It worked. After a hairy moment where the laptop wouldn't power on at all(dead battery!) It booted up first time. Just creating the recovery media now so that I can restore to a new drive if necessary. Crystaldiskinfo reports 3 'current sectors pending'. Thats what happened with my Spinpoint F3 recently, only with mine they were increasing almost daily. Maybe this one could be okay for a while?

well, if the MBR and some other files get put on a corrupted sector, or the sector goes bad (bad shutdown), then windows or windows setup has a fit, the drive is prolly not gonna pass an extensive fitness test. A Surge or Jolt (ie Slamming the Lid) can cause the Secotrs it wrote the MBR and boot files on to go bad.), as closing the lid usually either shuts it down or puts in sleep mode.

recover the windows license using the programs I linked Above, print it and put it somewhere safe.

even the recovery CDs/Partitions will ask you for the license key.

Done, cheers Skate.