Major Vista problem(corupted file, recovery options stall)

Im not sure where to begin, but I know I'm pretty much screwed here. This is by far out of my league as far as my computing knowledge and experience. I hope someone can help:

I have Vista Ultimate x64 on a Quad Core w/ 4gig of ram, SLi, 2 8600 GTS, with creative X-FI Xtreme sound card, p5n32-e ASUS motherboard with nVidia 680i chipset. Amazing machine that has been flawless, with the exception of Vista and its problems with 3rd party drivers. software. etc...so for 9 months i've gone without any

The problem occured when I was playing The Witcher...on a occasion(once a month or more) my sound card drivers fail or give out. So I must restart the drivers by doing a reboot. We'll this reboot has put my OS and HDD in a state of vegitation. Yes my OS is in coma and I need help.

The OS had been booting up strangely the past couple of weeks. Sometimes I had to reboot twice to get Vista to load. The problem somehow surpassed me since I usually just keep the computer on a week at a time or longer. Whenever an update is installed and a reboot is necessary are the only time the computer gets rebooted or turned off. I never got around to doing a system restore point when Vista was loading.

We'll I went into BIOS, setup my CD ROM driver to boot b4 my single 320gig partition. My Vista DVD-ROM loads up but I cant do any sort of repair, restore, or installation. The start up repair either sits at searching for problems or repairing for hours at a time without any sign or indication of progress, through the progress bar is moving accross the desginated spot but all I hear is my 4 processors and my fans...no real activity or vibration coming from the HDD.

I tried to Install windows and it just sits at the lite blue please wait screen for 2 hours. Didnt wait any longer and tried a different method. The 3rd option is a restore point, but problem is the restore point is corrupted, as is the case with my problm. Check disk doesnt do anything, I tried cmd prompts for bootrec and chkdsk and get no real fix or progress on either/or.

Basically I've tried all I can think of, but I still cant get the Vista recovery disk and its tools to work. It will load on safe mode, but kicks me to Vista DVD/CD recovery that you can boot from the cd before the partition and its OS (through BIOS boot order). This is if safe mode loads at all. Sometimes it will load the drivers but even then the OS doesnt load and sits at the cmd screen with drivers loaded and the please wait...at the bottom.

So, how in the world do I restore my partition and Vista without buying a new HDD?



PS
I also tried looking for my old XP recovery cd from my old cpu which I am currently using and typing from. Cant find it and seems to me I might be looking for a new HDD and start from sratch. I've had this coruption problem before, but it seemed to only be the video drivers and conflict with an older DX9c game. Did a windows repair and everything worked since.

Well since you can't get the OS to even install, that rules out any software related issues. Certianly something hardware wise.

1) Hard drive - more then likely the culprut

2) mobo - not as likely, but also possible

Even longer shot by the issue you discribed is bad ram, but i dont think thats teh case here.

Hop on google and search for "drive fitness test" and also "memtest 86"

you'll need to download and burn them with a program such as nero as they will be in a ISO file format. You can then use them to test your hardware. Good luck.

Very much doubt its any hardware that is causing this problem. If any hardware it for sure would be the HDD. Also I cant launch Vista so only test I can run are through CMD(aka DOS) or through the Vista DVD/CD recovery.

I've neveer tried or heard of the driver fitness test, memtest86 does sound somewhat fimilar. If I where able to d/l and burn the ISO files to a CD, how do I go about running the test. Im assuming the same way I run the Vista CD/DVD, but even then would running those test solve the problem?

Once you burn the images you would just boot off the CD. DFT and memtest won't fix the issue, but it will let you know if there is one. DFT however does have a sector repair feature, if that was the case.

Anything else just let me know