locking at splash screen

So for the past month or so my computer would randomly lock up and I'd have to do a shutdown by holding the power button, it was doing it infrequently, but then became more frequent - I've had the computer probably 2 or 3 years now with no problems

So i assume its a defrag issue considering i dont do it often and i have a lot of files - defragged it, ran ccleaner, combofix, and a few virus scanners and it still was doing the freezing. Last night though, it shut down and now its locking up on the Windows XP loading splash screen..

I figure this is a harddrive issue because its not loading in safemode or anything either. I also tried using some IDE hard drives (although Im not sure if I did that part right) to test if it was the HD but mine is SATA and neitehr worked. (The IDE drives didnt go past the comp spec screen where you can put in the cd-rom to boot)

So basically, what all could this be? I'm really hoping its not just a dead drive cause I cant really afford another atm.. and if it is that - I assume there is no way to retrieve the crap on it?

Also before I'm asked, I'm not 100% on my comp specs, but I can say my HD is a 1tb barricuda seagate hd, and its 4 core 2.4~ish ghz, and ram is uhh DDR3 ballistix tracer it says.. 2g i believe

any help or suggestions would be great >.<