chkdsk ran 8 hrs, then black screen, then weird startup screen, then..

... after 15 minutes of hanging in that weird startup screen, considering whether to hard reboot or not, it went into start repair (still there now)...

To make a long story short, I suspected something wrong with my hard drive due to a software giving me an i/o error, after some research (I am not knowledgable when it comes to computers), I ran chkdsk, when I woke up it was still running as it should be (in the process of 'replacing bad clusters' for certain files... so there was something wrong alright) and was at 28%.

After leaving my computer for ten minutes, I found my computer had gone to a black screen and seeing as I was reluctant to do a hard reboot, I waited it out and it moved to a windows safe mode startup screen... but only the big cursor and standard background was present, nothing else (see attached picture). After ten minutes it went to startup repair, which has been running for the past half hour.

What has happened during the ten minutes I was away and chkdsk was still only at 28%, why did the subsequent events unfold as they did? What can I do now??

Hi, I couldn't get IN safe mode, it ran startup repair by itself and I believe the reason that it took 24 hours was because my hard drive was already in a bad way... So now I wake up and find a SMART message telling me that the hdd failure is imminent and that I should back up things.

Too late thought, when I choose the option to get into windows, it goes very slow and a blue screen flashes, bringing me back to the choice of doing a startup repair or try again. Sigh.

Download the maker's HD Diagnostics DOS CD scan, burn to CD using Windows Image Burner, boot to run extended scan.

Next run another full Disk Check (Option 2) from Win7 installer System Recovery Options or Repair CD Command Line.

Alternative method: download free Partition Wizard bootable CD, burn to CD using Windows Image Burner, boot to run Partition Wizard Partition surface test, followed by Partition Wizard Check File System.

If HD passes both tests, work through the steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start. The installer is provided in Step 5 to use for repairs or if necessary reinstall.