Apple logo with spinning gear

My MacBook Pro froze up on me this morning and I was unable to shut it down normally.
No keys were working and so I forced it to boot by holding down the power button until it turn off. However, upon start up I'm stuck at the apple logo with the spinning gear.
I've tried safe mode - safe mode progress bar starts and then goes back to spinning gear.
I don't have a copy of the OS on disk but I have my whole computer backed up to my time capsule.
Any suggestions?

Whew, tough without another Mac around, but...
Does it boot to Single User Mode, CMD+s keys at bootup, if so try...
/sbin/fsck -fy
Repeat until it shows no errors fixed.
(Space between fsck AND -fy important).
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Please report outcome.

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Apple logo with spinning gear

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