windows 7 perpetual loading, safe mode too

Problem:
Windows 7 x64 perpetually loading at boot screen. This also applies when booting into safe mode.

Background:
A day or 2 ago, I was copying some files from one 2tB storage drive to another when windows froze entirely. No BSOD, no mouse movement, no graphics card grey screen. I waited a 20-30 seconds to see if it would recover or crash to a blue screen. Nothing happened, so I did a hard reset. It posted but during the AHCI drive check my DVD optical drive's label was a jumble of symbols. It came to the screen warning me windows had not shut down properly, I chose to start in safe mode with networking (I was going to attempt to update directX and I can only do this in safe mode because it claims the files are in use otherwise). It goes to the list of drivers etc. and i suppose all of them loaded (I really should have payed attention). It got to the end of the list and just sat there with the "Loading Windows.." at the bottom. I waited a while, nothing. I did a hard reset again, it posted again, same jumbled letters for the DVD burner (this remedied itself after a few boot attempts), and I let it load windows normally. It continued to the fancy windows animation began loading windows. It just sits there. It isn't frozen because the window still animates, it just never boots into windows. The windows drive is a 1tB Samsung HD103SJ.

I have an Asus mobo and it has F8 as the hotkey for a boot device menu. I have no idea how to trigger safe mode. It'll show the bios screen, post, and then show the bios screen again (only the second time can you activate hotkey functions) and then start windows.

Either way, I can't get into windows. I assume the installation is corrupt and its not a bad drive because A) it doesnt make any strange noises, B) the computer posts it properly and C) I tried to use a powered USB to SATA adapter plugged into a laptop to run chkdsk or something and the disk shows up in Disk Manager (didn't work, disk manager wants to initialize it but it "cant find file" when I select OK. so I cant access the drive.)

I don't really know what to do. It'd be awesome if I had some direction to head in or some advice. I'd prefer not running strange third party software to recover this or repair that. I am NOT willing to reformat at this point. The drive seems mechanically sound, so I'm going with a corrupt windows installation. Thoughts? Questions? Sorry about the long post, I wanted to be detailed.

 

I would try bootrec- to recover the boot, as it may have become corrupted.-I would download and print this , and study it, before doing it.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

 

This did not work. Also when running bootrec and using the ScanOS command, it comes back with 0 windows installations (i dont know if this is normal). I was able to go into Windows RE from the drive (!!) without using a cd. It detects the drive and that windows7 is installed on it. I ran the Startup Repair which runs a full suite of diagnostics (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722188%28WS.10%29.aspx) and it successfully completed all tests and said windows booted successfully.

Maybe it really is hardware? I figured out how to trigger Safe Mode. The last driver it loads before it gets stuck is atipcie.dll which one would assume means my ATI graphics card might be the issue. Why is it loading this in safe mode? safe mode uses my onboard graphics doesnt it? I removed it anyway just in case but to no avail.

A friend said it was probably my drive going bad. I ordered another drive. Hes going to try and get everything off of it since it still works fine as a regular drive (as far as I know) so I dont lose prog settings and files i had floating around on my desktop.

Still open to suggestions if anyone has had experiences with this.