... But it doesn't work...

My bro came home from Iraq to visit us for abit before going back to base in Alaska. He gave me his old laptop because "you need a laptop for college, it's kinda a necessity"... So, he turned it on and changed the screen name to Jon and deleted all his search history etc.

It was handed to me, 5 minutes after that i tried to install msn messenger onto Vista... It didn't work, I was like "oh well...", then a message popped up going "install updates!" I'm like, "alright, the updates might fix it!" right? Well after the updates install, it gives me Vista service pack 2.

My laptop bluescreened 4-5 times in a row after that... Well, I tried to go back and restore to comp to a previous point in time (comps are kool like that)... But it wouldn't let me... I don't know why though...

It then wouldn't load past the Gateway loading screen when I turned it on... So, I took out one of the RAM sticks to see if that would help... It did, but, it wouldn't do anything else... I'm missing the boot logger or whatever...

So then, thinking that just installing a new OS might work, I put in my XP disc... It bluescreened before I even gave it the option to install... I put in another OS disc and deleted all partitions... Same story... I brought it to my computer genius friend's house... He wiped it clean and tried about 7 different OS's, even putting one of them on my flashdrive to test a theory... All failed...

In the end, I think it's a problem with either the Harddrive, or the motherboard... I'm leaning more towards the hard drive being the problem though...

But I don't have money to buy a new one! TTATT...

So uh... Anyone want commissions...?

Edit:

I forgot to add that, every time it loads up, it says

"BootMGR is missing
press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart"