Got a new Acer desktop at a Circuit city give away special.(computer is $700, buy the package with this 19" flat screen moniter, and the package is $600???)

Played with it for a couple of days, never got around to creating the recovery disks.(what, me worry??). Had 3 power surges (not interupts)on Sat that blew threw the Tripp lite surge/backup protection system.

The HD (serial AT, 2x 200 gig partitions) will not boot to anything, refuses chkdsk, and wants reformat. I presume lots of up front damage to HD.
Options:

will Acer accept this as a waranty even though this is not an acer materials failure? if they will and reload, I just mail the machine to them.

I have win xp, and other hard drives, so I can reformat and load xp on the drive. How do I then transfer the Acer provided XP, and their programs and drivers to the HD, since I did not make those all important backup image dvd's?