Hello computer savy players, I have had great problems with my laptop and have just now found the time and resources to fix it. Here is the most information I can provide that I can think of, but feel free to ask away:

The laptop is an Alienware. I am mildly sure it's an m15 but not 100%. I ran Windows 7 on it 32 bit before the crash. Here are the problems:

-Battery: The battery is completely shot. I called Alienware and they cannot find a correct battery for it. For now: the battery isn't inside the laptop and it runs off the charger. More of a desktop really.

-I honest to god can't use it. I turn it on and it brings me to things such as Bio, etc. I have gone as far as it asking me to download Windows 7 on it; however, it cannot find it's own hard drive. I am imagining the drive is shot completely and I need to purchase a new one; however, I do have an external hard drive so I was curious if I could use that somehow to at least get this thing up and running before I invest more money into it only to find the drive wasn't the problem.

Any more information please just ask. I want this laptop to be available as soon as possible as it contains both important information and would be useful for when guests come over.

~With appreciation in advance for even reading, Hax

if your hdd is the thing thats shot, install windows to a partition in the external and try it.
hit google for some more in depth explanations.

you need to start from scratch, Flash the bios, Wipe the HDD/'s and install everything again.

How do I do all of that?

*Edit* Thanks for the help guys, I tried replacing my hard drive with one from an older laptop and she works fine now.

Tagknife, stfu you don't know anything as far as I'm concerned.
Ignore him, he told me this when i had a simple virus.

Hxc, what were you doing before it did all this?

**EDIT** ok you fixed it, try and do a virus/malware/Spyware scan on that HDD if even possible.

Hxc since you have a usb drive you can actually run windows from that, you're going to have to tell the bios to read usb drives as harddrives though which if your alienware laptop is decently new you should have the option.

another thing you might try is to look around in the bios to see what the primary hdd is set as, quite possibly if you have it hooked up while trying to boot your laptop it might be trying to read the usb drive instead of your primary hdd and could be why it's actually not working as far as that goes. that is unless the hdd is completely undetected in the bios... in which case yes you would need a new hdd. having an older laptop hdd on hand is a good test but doesn't mean your other one is dead.

it could have possibly reset the drive priorities after replacing the hdd with the other laptop hdd. i would try to put your original hdd back in and see if it works.