Vostro 1700 BSOD Bizarre HDD

Ok now I'm not the owner of this laptop my boss brought it to me moaning it was broken,

[Prepare for mega post]

Originally on start up it would complete the post but when it cam to loading windows it failed blue screen and then rebooted [the BSOD lasted a very short amount of time so I couldn't get the error] after rebooting a screen claiming that windows wasn't shut down properly appears asking if you'd like to repair windows or start normally.  Starting normally causes the blue screen and reboot  again. choosing repair is only marginally more fruitful, windows attempts to repair for a few minutes and then claims that it cannot but the graphical interface appears apparently without issue.

So apparently there were some photos that weren't backed up which I needed to save if possible so I grabbed a copy of my linux mint distro and live booted the os off the disc this allowed me to access the HDD fine and i managed to save all the photos onto another machine.

Naturally I assumed some windows files were horrendously corrupt and attempted to reinstall windows vista with the supplied disc [ I've had a similar problem with another computer and reinstalling worked] the vista install goes through all the procedures fine. Until it's apparently 'completing installation...' it would sit on this screen for hours on end. At first I just thought it was being a bit slow but after 4 hours I decided to pull the plug. I attempted the re-installation several more times each time as fruitless as the first it always hangs on completing installation. during one attempt I left it running over night only to return to a black screen with a mouse pointer. if I tried booting windows after it had hung then I get the windows loading screen indefinately. Ok so I thought maybe it's a dead HDD so I took the HDD out and put the one from my laptop in [this HDD has windows installed] it booted and ran without issue. so I took the vostro HDD and put it into my laptop the windows installation still failed. I then thought maybe the Vista disc is damaged so I tried and XP disc I had [after putting HDD's back in their original laptops]. Now XP just refused to even realise there was a HDD at all. as soon as the disc had loaded XP claimed there wasn't a HDD installed. There definatly was.

Ok so weird i can't install windows yet I could access the HDD  through a live boot disc. Up until this point I hadn't nuked the entire HDD only the System partition in the hope of saving the data Partition. So I thought if I can access the drive through a live boot then can I access it normally? so I put the Vostro's HDD in my laptop as the second HDD and booted into windows. Yep I can access the drive fine all the data it's all the fine.

So maybe it was that partition so I nuked the entire drive single partition try vista again. nope still hangs. Then I tried installing Linux and guess what installed without a hitch worked beautifully.

Right so now I have a HDD that linux can install on and that you can access as a slave HDD but can't install windows onto.

So is there an Issue with Vista AND XP installing onto SATA drives?

I've tried changing the SATA settings from AHCI [sp?] to ATA in the bios to no avail [I also tried this before I attempted a Reinstall] 

Is there some kind of anti Microsoft chip or gremlin in this HDD?

I also read some where that Vista has a problem loading SATA drivers and that putting in the driver disc when it hangs would load the drivers and solve the issue. Nope didn't work.

I'm Really stuck here in all honesty I have no idea and don't get it If anyone has any ideas they'd be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

My apologise in advance for any grammatical and spelling errors