Just for reference, this is a Inspiron 1525 model. Have had it for three years, and I recently had it crash and burn on me, so much so, that I had to get a new hard drive. It's not even a month old. Anyway, this afternoon, I get this notice on my desktop that there's this super important Windows update that needs to be installed. One of those installations that will take about an hour. I click on it, it seems to install no problem after several minutes, and the laptop restarts, just like it's supposed to. But then, disaster hits. It's going through all of my files or whatever they are, on a black screen with a single white line of text at the top. Then it freezes on a random number, somewhere in the 28,000 out of 97,000. Sometimes it's 9461, but always with this weird code message next to it, "!!0xc01a001d!!" and Registry/Machine/COMPONENTS/DerivedData... It won't continue. I've tried restarting it several times, in several modes, like Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, Safe Mode with Networking, Last Known Good Configuration. Nothing works. I've tried using the re-installation DVD, but it won't load. I don't even know how to get it to. Safe Mode starts listing a bunch of drivers, but then it stops on one called AVGIDSEH with the Loading Windows Fioles at the top and Please wait... at the bottom. Frozen.

So my question to you, technical geeks, is what the hell is up? Why would a brand new hard drive be doing this? I NEED my laptop this weekend while I go away on vacation. I've been screwed out of over $260 from Office Depot for this new hard drive. I plan on going back there tomorrow, but first I'd like to see if anyone here can help me. It'd be greatly appreciated.