HP Computer won't boot - bad HDD?

[GLaDOS]

Hello all,

My neighbor's HP computer will no longer boot. When you power on the machine, it gives you the HP splash screen and their diagnostic options, boot menu, setup options, etc. but then when it tries to boot the OS, nothing happens, it's just a black screen.

I suspect this is a hard drive issue and I've tried swapping out several hard drives (my plan was to put to a working HDD and try to use my neighbor's HDD as a secondary HDD that I could just pull their files off of), but all of the ones I had were broken to begin with and gave me all sorts of error messages when I tried to boot to those (i.e. BSOD, can't read HDD, etc.)

Is there any tool I can use to try and repair the original HDD and get it to boot to the OS. I've heard SpinRite mentioned several times but don't have any first-hand experience with it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Have you tried to setup one of your hard drives without the neighbors hard drive hooked up at all?
That hard drive may be causing errors and not letting your hard drive install properly.
Here is a link that may help you out.
Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

 

[Kingdom_Seeker]

Are these SATA or IDE drives? I see this is an old post and the problem may have been resolved.