Windows 7: Hard Drive crashed and I can't run Safe Mode?

Alright, here's what happened. My dad's hard computer crashed, and we've spent the better half of 12 hours trying to recover about 30 gigs of music off of it. The problem is that the Windows repair stuff that came with our Windows 7 Ultimate isn't helping AT ALL, neither is repair disks, or any other junk that you can think of (and believe me, we've tried it all). When we try to boot the hard drive we get a "Error Configuring System" message, and when we've tried to run Safe Mode by holding f8, it doesn't allow us to. Now, we've also tried running an alternate boot source from the BIOS menu, then holding f8 to see if it'll give us advanced BIOS options and allow us to get to safe mode that way... but to no avail. This is frustrating me and him beyond belief and we can't find any help on the internet here. Hopefully you computer guru's can lend us some of your brain power to help fix this problem.

If the hard drive crashed, in the traditional sense, it is toast. Everything on the drive may be lost.

I think that you may mean that the computer crashed, not the hard drive

Got it you can. Mis read.

Edited the title and text, I hope you understand my meaning though.

If I can get all of your stuff, do you have an install DVD to reinstall windows?

We have the Windows 7 Ultimate original Cd. When we try to run it to boot off of though, it won't let us. It's being a hassle in general.

You have to reset BIOS to boot from DVD
Boot Priority - Change - Vista Forums
This works with 7 just as well.

We've done all that, and it hasn't helped us recover our stuff or even fix the system. We need a way to get into safe mode WITHOUT using f8, because apparently that's not working. Tried everything including what you've mentioned
=( -sadface-

These are all the ways to access safe mode.
Safe Mode

I'll give this a shot, since when it fails to repair with the Repair disk, it gives us the option of opening a command prompt. Thanks for your help so far and I'll get back to you when we're done.