Asus G50vt-X5 (Best Buy) not booting past BIOS

I'm sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong forum - if this should be posted elsewhere, please let me know.

My Asus G50vt-X5 (from Best Buy) is no longer booting into Windows. If I turn the computer on with the power button and let it start, more often than not the "Republic of Gamers" logo comes on but does not go away. About 45 seconds later, the explosion sound played during the BIOS splash screen will replay and this continues to happen until I power it down/reboot.

If I push ESC and then F9 for the recovery partition or F2 for the boot menu (I try these on separate boots) the computer will sit at "Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 0" for about 3 minutes. Then, it will give an error message of "AHCI Port0 Device Error, Press F2 to Resume."

Some other information the boot screen says once the error message has come up:
Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 0..SATA Hard Disk
Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 1..ATAPI CDROM
SATA Port0 ST9320421AS SD13
S.M.A.R.T. Capable and Status BAD
SATA Port1 HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T50L SR07
Auto-Detecting USB Mass Storage Devices ..
00 USB mass storage devices found and configured

The "S.M.A.R.T. Capable and Status BAD" under SATA Port0 is making me think the hard drive is bad or at least something happened to it? At different points since I've owned it my computer has acted weird - occassionally Windows performed chkdsk in the past upon rebooting, or when powering the computer on it would hang at the BIOS splash screen but a reboot would fix it. Also, whenever it has issues during startup the computer would make odd sounds -- it was basically a *softbeep*, click... *softbeep*, click... Originally this made me think that there was something wrong with the optical drive because the sounds came from right around that area.

Also, sometimes the computer gets a little farther in the startup process and gives me the message "Windows is loading files" with a little progress bar. However, about a third of the way through it typically gives an error message stating it could not load and this could be the result of a hard disk or optical drive failing, or possibly something like a USB drive not being properly connected. When bypassing this message the computer normally says "Reboot and Select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key.. " Before the computer died, I had put in a USB flash drive and didn't know if it was somehow disconnected improperly but leaving it plugged in causes no difference in my problems.

Recently, I was able to get into the BIOS and verify it is set to boot in this priority: Hard Disk --> CD ROM --> Other --> Network. I also reset all values to default factory settings.

Unfortunately it's not something as simple as reinstalling Windows because the computer doesn't get far enough to let me; I can't get to the recovery partition and trying to set up the PC to boot from CD results in the same "AHCI Port0 Device Error, Press F2 to Resume" message.

Does anyone have any ideas of what might be happening and how I can fix it? I'm thinking there is definitely some issue with the hard drive based on what is going on. I've seen some people suggesting the hard drive cable may have become loose but I'm not sure how to fix it. If the hard drive is dead, will I need to buy a new one to replace it? The laptop was purchased on 02/22/2009 so I am not sure what would still be covered by warranty.

Thank you for any responses

 

The hard drive was the common dud on the X5's from reading the reviews, blame seagate. Most of them seemed to be out of the box and not down the road though.

As you probably cant get an exchange from best buy anymore its best to call ASUS. The stock HDD is covered under warranty and the X5 came with a 1 year asus warranty. You can get your own HDD for it but just incase its not the hard drive and something else is also wrong I would send it in, better that way.

There is no cable on the hdd, its direct to the port on the motherboard, you could undo the metal holding it in and pull it out put it back in, personally if its no huge loss to data I wouldnt touch it, less reason for ASUS to think you did something.