Another problem with my Dell laptop...

did they replace the drive with the same model as your previous drive? sometimes a particular model drive has a bad batch. your new drive probably only had a 90 day warranty, which would be up now, but you should check just in case.

does your computer get overheated? the two main causes of hard drive failure on new drives is bumping/jostling/etc while the drive is in use and overheating. so the two things to watch out for are to make sure not to move your computer while it is reading or writing to the drive and to make sure that there is proper ventilation/cooling of your computer. make sure the fan(s) are working and the vents are not blocked - for example don't leave it for long on your couch or even your lap unless it is raised enough for air to get under it. and make sure dirt and debris are not getting inside. when i worked as a pc technician, you wouldn't believe the things i would find inside computers when i took them apart - including things that used to be alive....

ok, since you probably are not going to get a new drive, the one thing you can do is try to make sure data is not written to the bad parts if you have bad sectors. (you may or may not have bad sectors - the error you gave just means hard drive failure, not necessarily the type of failure). have you run chkdsk yet? you can run this from a DOS prompt but the easiest way to run it is to do this:

open up My Computer and right click on your hard drive (if you have multiple partitions C: D: E: or whatever, do this for each partition of your hard drive). click on Properties and then the Tools tab. under Error Checking, click Check Now. a box will open up and make sure you check both boxes under the Check Disk options and then click Start. you will get a message asking you if you want to start chkdsk when your computer restarts. click Yes. reboot your computer and let it run uninteruppted. there are 5 passes it needs to make of different checks so it may take awhile depending on the size of your drive. when it is done it gives a short report of any errors and corrections made, but it scrolls by quickly so you may not be able to read it. however don't worry if you miss it. here is how to find the report when you reboot into Windows again:

go to Start - Settings - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Event Viewer. in Event Viewer click on Application. under the Source column, look for Winlogon. when you find a winlogon entry double click it and a properties box will open. the log results of the chkdsk will be in the description field. there may or may not be a few Winlogon entries so you may have to click on more than one to find the chkdsk one but it doesn't take long.

if you had bad sectors (and you clicked those boxes i mentioned) then chkdsk will label those sectors to no longer be written to. this should help stabilize your operating system. since sectors may continue to go bad on a failing drive, you should run this occasionally to see if that is happening and to make sure the newly bad sectors are not used. this also helps you determine how quickly your drive will fail. at first it may take awhile for new bad sectors to show up and then you may get them more frequently. when you start getting significant quantities of bad sectors, you know to replace your drive right away.

like i said, you may not even have bad sectors but you will find out by doing the above. if that's not the problem, there are lots of drive diagnostic utilities you can download. i don't off hand have a suggestion for one - different ones seem to work better for different brands of hard drives - but you can google your hard drive and diagnostic utilities and find out for yourself. ok, hope this helps you.