HP 530 Laptop cannot access HD

My grandson has the HP 530 laptop Vista basic on sticker on top vista business on label on bottom LOL, we bought for him last year, now out of warranty. When starting up it asks for boot disk or press F11 for recovery. I downloaded a vista boot disk from interent and tried using it. It starts, loads the files from disk etc then after a while it comes up with blue screen and error
***stop 0x0000007e (0xc0000005, 0x8898a8aa, 0x82e03b58, 0x82e03854)
I then restarted and used the f11 option (as recovery is on hard drive) and got the windows recovery screen and tried to recover, it started but then I got error message and couldnt continue so I restarted and got blue screen again saying fatal system error verification of knowndll failed.

I then retried with boot disk and got the reinstall windows screen. It gave me three options Install Now, What to know before installing windows, repair your computer. When selecting repair it asks me to select operating system to repair but there are none listed so cannot continue.. It says if you dont see op system listed click load drivers for your hard disk. I dont have drivers for hard disk.
Does all this mean that it cannot access the hd as it has failed or has windows been removed/corrupted on hd due to virus maybe? I had antivirus installed but with teenage boys not keeping uptodate and sharing usb keys with mates with games etc anything could of happened.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I am not sure if I can plug this laptop into my computer to see if I can locate the hd? I am only amateur with some knowledge. Thanks for any help

 

I forgot to add that if I used the install windows option I cannot as I dont have a vista install disk as the laptop came with just the recovery on the hard drive

 

Start here, the page for the HP 530
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...&cc=us&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=3375953
and click on the 2nd option Diagnose problem or Chat (HP Instant Support).
Inquire if you can purchase the restore CD for this model because the recovery partition does not seem to be working. Live chat, I believe, is still available even if the product is out of warranty.

You could also go nere http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...Id=135&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=3375953
click on Vista Home Basic and download the drivers but buying a restore CD would be a cleaner install and would also work if you have to replace the hd because it has failed.