Windows 7 - Disk boot failure, can launch to safe mode through boot menu

I left my computer asleep. When I awoke it, it froze up, so I restarted it and it told me I had a disk boot failure, insert boot disk.

If I reboot, and press f8 to get a boot menu from the bios, I can select the drive that has windows on it.

If I do not intervene beyond this, it will boot to windows, but as soon as I login, it will show the task bar, but that's as far as it gets. The mouse will still move but beyond that I have no control, left or right click, ctrl, alt, del. Etc. The one light on the front of the case that usually blinks, remains on solid.

Sometimes after this stage if I reboot (with the button on the case), the drive that contains windows will not be recognized by the bios. It will simply say that sata connection is empty.

If I power the computer off, and wait a few seconds and turn it on, the drive will be displayed again. I then can press f8 to get the boot menu, and select the right drive, and this time I will press f8 to get the windows boot menu. I can select safe mode with networking, and boot up. I have been using windows on safe mode for over an hour and it runs fine.

I have run MSE, as well I downloaded AVG free, but I can only use the command line version in safe mode, which I did.

I am not sure what to check here. I was thinking the hard drive was failing, but then why am I able to run on safe mode for so long? Boot sector virus? Some other virus? What should I look for, and what can I do in safe mode, a lot of choices are disabled.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I would first Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
HD Diagnostic

Thanks Theog, I will give that a try.

I I used partition wizard bootable cd, and used repair mbr on the c drive, and now it does not get the boot disk error, but windows still gets stuck if I let it launch into regular windows.

Thanks again Theog,

I ran Seatools for dos, and it passed the short test, but it told me smart was tripped... I never knew what smart was until today

It is currently doing the long test with 59 errors.

I put the smart warranty validation code and serial number in on seagates site and was surprised to see it is in warranty!

Hopefully I can get the drive cloned over to my other drive before I send it in though. I'll cross my fingers. I suppose this is what I get for not keeping up with preventative maintenance.

Not looking for the HD, but looking good for warranty.

Seatools was able to repair the disk, and I used windows to create system image, and then restored to another drive. I also enabled SMART in the bios.

I'm just wiping the drive, and then I will pull it out and send it back to Seagate.

Thanks again for the help.

Good luck for warranty.

Well done.