Vista boot hang

[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 wouldnt 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 doesnt 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 didnt 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 dont 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)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Could you try a boot disc? There's probably one around that can check the SMART values. If it freezes up while trying to check them, I'd assume the HDD is screwed. Short of physically opening up the drive (which I don't recommend), that's what I'd do.

Also, if there a warranty? They might replace the HDD.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Well, this thread is gonna come to an abrupt end.
I think I figured out whats wrong, or rather what isnt. The HDD seems to be fine, as even with it removed, the computer hangs on booting FreeBSD 7.1 ( which I may mention takes 20 seconds to boot under normal conditions)
I've also by now swapped around the RAM to check that, didnt do a thing. Most likely answer is that the SATA controller has gone bad, for what reason though, I dont know. I dont think a hard, but at the same time, not shattering impact could damage any of the chips on the motherboard.
So, since its warrantied, off it goes.