Is my MBP hard drive dead?

[Chlojo]

I have a 2.16 Gig 17" Mac Book Pro from early 2006, that's gone thru both a logic board and hard drive replacement. The optical drive is also gone since it hasn't worked for several years. Recently the computer couldn't start altogether. I'd get the Apple logo and then a permanent blue screen. Since the superdrive is gone I can't boot up from the System DVD. I also Time Machine'd the whole system to an external drive, but lent the drive to someone who needed space and deleted the folder.
I would buy and try to install a new hard drive (pretty cheap these days), but I'd like to know first if the is definitely a hard drive issue. Please weigh in.

 

[osxx]

Have you tried this? Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

 

[Chlojo]

Thanks. Tried that fix. Still ending up with a blank blue screen.

 

[chscag]

You're really in a pickle... no backup, no optical drive, ??? About the only way you're going to find out if the hard drive is toast is to buy a new one and install it. But the problem with doing that is you can't install OS X on a new hard drive because you have no optical drive. You've got some decisions to make.