ASpire Hard drive replacement E-575 laptop

Thef2rc

I think the hard drive of my Aspire E-575 laptop has failed.  It will power up but won't go past the ACER screen.  I can get in to BIOS and I don't see anything there in terms of error codes or anything amiss.

If I were to buy a new hard drive, there's the problem that I don't believe I got a windows 10 CD when I got the laptop.  What do I do about that?  I don't want to ship it to ACER since it's out of warranty and I don't think I should have to buy a copy of Windows.

Also if I've skipped a step and trouble shooting and you think it might be something else, any advice appreciated.  Thanks

Thef2rc

Thanks Gawain.   New hard drive and I was back in business.  

Gawain

if your computer came with 10, there's no need to worry as there is a chip on the motherboard (uefi) that has a reference to your license key for your laptop.  So if a hard drive is changed, a bootable usb stick using a windows 10 .iso file from MS will (or should!) activate automatically when installed on it.   If it won't go past the Acer screen, its worth trying to restore the drive or indeed loading from a usb stick just in case it's fine and instead having an MS meltdown instead!  

here's the MS link should you need it:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO

Thef2rc

About to give it a try, trying to figure out if the laptop is 32 or 64....

Gawain

        64

Thef2rc

Thanks Gawain.   New hard drive and I was back in business.