I had to install a new hard drive on my laptop and I do not have the original operations disc to install, I didn't receive one when I purchased the laptop, can I install any kind of operations disc on it. Example window 8,xp,vista?

In theory yes... in reality no.

Her's why... there might not be drivers available for your laptop.

Search to see if there are drivers available from the manufacturer before you buy an O/S to install. It will save a lot of money and grief. And narrow down what you know you can install without problems.

Also make sure your laptop meets the specifications for the OS your wanting to install. If your old drive is still working you could reinstall it and see if it has a recovery drive on it. That will bring your new drive back to factory specification.

Since you cannot install two drives into a laptop, one of them (preferably the new drive) would have to be turned into an external drive in order to do what califdadof3 suggests. Since you didn't mention what was wrong with the old drive (bad sectors, slow disk access) it might not be possible. That's why so many suggest making a back up of your drive when its new so you have an image to put onto a new drive if disaster strikes. I'm not even sure the hidden partition can be copied to an external drive since I have never had the opportunity try it.

If you visit your laptops manufacturers drivers page you will see what OS's are available for that model.

yes you can install any operating system on it.

Actually No you can't... many of them won't have needed device drivers needed for multiple things to work correctly... the video and audio being the least of them, but the Lan port.. modem or wireless card etc...

You could force a lot of things there, including a MAc OSX... but it wouldn't have much functionality other than booting up in 16 color with no ability to communicate with the outside world.

A very common problem trying to run updated Operating systems with machines more than a couple years old.

I do this sort of thing a lot...

Since you cannot install two drives into a laptop, one of them (preferably the new drive) would have to be turned into an external drive in order to do what califdadof3 suggests.

Actually this isn't true. If there is a recovery partion on the old drive and it I functioning. Then they could make an iso and send it to a thumb drive. That way they have it as a copy to install on the new drive. The only thing my suggestion requires is swapping the drives to get to the information so long as the old drive is still working.