Vista Boot Hang and crcdisk.sys problems

[Genocidicbunny]

I got my new laptop on 3/19/09, installed Vista x64 on it and all was well for a day. This morning, it started up fine, I checked email, read news while I ate breakfast, packed up the laptop and went to school. 2 hours later, at school, it wouldn't boot. Gets to the Vista boot loading screen, the one with the green bar, and it just goes on and on. After 20 minutes it gets stuck and doesn't seem to be doing anything (barely any vibration, I assume its the fan since its not directly over the HDD).
Safe Mode presents another problem: crcdisk.sys hangs forever, which I assume means the OS is finding a lot of errors with the HDD.
So far I have reinstalled Vista twice, formatted the HDD completely and installed Vista again, to no avail. System Recovery Options didn't help as it comes up with an Unexpected I/O error every single time.
I have a suspicion as to why this happened: An overly enthusiastic friend of mine kicked my backpack as her way of saying hello, and it had my laptop in it.
Now, I don't have another laptop drive to test ( not a SATA one at least ) so I cannot do that. My old laptop is IDE-based. Id really rather not have to replace the HDD, because that means forcing my friend to buy one ( I do not want to spend another 85$ on an HDD, I already paid enough as is for the laptop )
So, anyone have idea's or suggestions as to what I can try to do, before I resort to getting a new HDD?
Specs are as follows:
MSI EX625 Laptop
Intel P7350 @2.0gHz
Fujitsu 320GB MHZ2320BH G2
(I think those are the only ones relevant)
I want to mention that through all of this I have not gotten a single BSOD.

 

[pat mcgroin]

In safe mode try to get to a command prompt.
when there type
cd\ <enter>
chkdsk /f <enter>

Also as far as the unexpected I/O error goes have you installed the MB drivers from the MSI website?

If neither of these work try to press F8 when booting as you would to get to safe mode and try to run the memory test listed there.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I cannot even get into safe mode or the recovery console. One gets stuck on crcdisk.sys and the other one gives an Unexpected I/O error.

I tried booting FreeBSD 7.1, and that took around 20 minutes to boot ( its a 448kb or so kernel, it should load in 20 seconds )
This happened with even the HDD removed, which leads me to believe that its maybe the SATA controller.

 

[pat mcgroin]

I hate to say this but possibly try a repair shop to plug in a different drive and see if they can read it.
Also try this link to get a bootable disk and run a memory test.