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fatbastard · Rated NC-17

OK..I recently picked up a new laptop and all was running fine until two days after a tech came and replaced my LCD and added a BT card. progression of events is as follows:
5/8 Tech replaced LCD
5/10 Machine failed to boot, saw BIOS screen then nothing. Tried to reboot then Vista tried to recover and failed. I manually tried to go back to a restore point but all failed.
5/11 machine seemed fine
5/12 Vista didn't load properly. Several apps flagged errors saying files were not found. Rebooted and all was fine.
5/13 Suspecting HDD was on its way out I backed up data and d/l Active Hard Disk Monitor. This read health of the drive at 57% on raw read error rate and 66% on seek error rate. Contacted India and was told to run the diagnostics, which flagged an inverter cable issue but no HDD issues.
I forwarded this info to the manufacturer but heard nothing so I called today. First I was told there was no such thing as an inverter cable then I was told that the other software was wrong and theirs was right. While this software may not be accurate I do trust it more than Dell especially in light of the errors. I was intending on reinstalling the OS but am hesitant since the drive may be going so my questions are:
1) Is there a good app to test the drive. I tried Seatools but it only reports back that SMART passes not the values of each so I don't know where they set teh threshold for failure.
2) What else could cause these random errors and should I just try reinstalling the OS and see if that fixes the problem?
3) Could errors in the OS cause these read and seek errors?