Possible hard drive failure

Ok so heres a handy trick that I found NORMALLY repairs corrupt or damaged hard drives, unless there is physical damage. If you are fairly competent with computers I highly recommend this as it's worked for me hundreds of times with many different HDD problems. First thing to check is if the laptops BIOS recognises the hard drive. It may not recognise it as a master or slave drive for some reason so hunting around in there may be advisable. If it is not in there at all the MBR (master boot record) is probably corrupt, but you will be erasing that anyway after a while. The next step is to get hold of a linux bootable cd. If you have a second computer (which judging by the fact that you are posting on here I guess you do have) go to the ubuntu website and download an iso, just get 32bit even though you have a 64bit processor because 32bit will run smoother. Now once you have downloaded that, burn it to a CD or DVD, or you can even install it to a usb drive which is always handy and your laptop is fairly new so it will support booting from a usb device. Once you have done all this, pop the CD/DVD/USB into your laptop, power on and enter the one-time boot menu (normally by hitting F11 or F12, may be different so observe the inital loading screen or if this is no help, google is your friend ). Now you dont want to install linux, you want to run it live so DO NOT install it. Once Ubuntu has loaded run Gparted, you may need to install it I use older versions of linux where this was already installed but (if my memory serves well) it is not included in newer versions. If you need to install it go to the ubuntu software center and type Gparted and it will appear on a list, dont use KDE its rubbish! Well, maybe not rubbish but it wont help fix your problem. Now open it. If your drive appears, HAPPY DAYS! If not you may need to unplug and replug the HDD then refresh the list. When your drive appears, delete ALL partitions. And I mean, ALL partitions. I have noticed that where a Windows install cd will pick up the normal partitions, and a system reserved partition, linux seems to notice one or 2 more. If you are asked if you want to erase the MBR, do it! When you reinstall windows if your hard drive does not have an MBR windows will write its own, but if your hdd does have an MBR windows will only add onto it to allow you to boot into windows. Once your hard drive is completely erased, you can reboot your laptop, and proceed to reinstall windows. I hope this helps, let me know if you try this and run into problems.