Can't start up; stuck at gray screen- started w/ Skype

hi all. my mom's Macbook Pro can't start up. it gets stuck at the grey screen w/ the Apple logo and spinning pinwheel every time. nothing else is plugged into the laptop aside from the power cord.
here's what i tried already, but to no avail:
- Reset SMC
- Reset PRAM
- Hold shift while starting up... nothing happens. So can't start in safe mode
- Used install disk to run Disk Utility diagnostic: Ran into a bunch of Disk Permission errors and fixed those. Nothing wrong on the Disk itself.
- Held Command-S while starting up and typed "fsck -fy". Got "File system was modified" at first. Ran it again and got clean bill of health there
- Held "d" while booting, ran the hardware test and it checked out fine.
after all of the above, tried waiting for it to restart for 15 minutes and still same spinning wheel.
this all started when a Skype update couldn't install, so i got rid of the current Skype. then tried downloading the new Skype. after it supposedly downloaded fully and it was automatically processing in the download pop up window (e.g. something about "writing", "image", etc.), it got stuck and froze the computer for at least 5 minutes. at that point, i help the power button until it turned out. then this started...
please help! thanks!
PS: not sure if this has anything to do w/ the problem, but after this happened, i tried to use Disk Utilities to make an image onto an external hard drive and it gave me an "operation timed out" error.
PPS: she has the following specs -
Hitachi Hard drive; partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table
MacBookPro5,1
Intel Core 2 Duo
2.40 GHz
L2 CPU Cache (per processor): 3MB
I think she has OS X 10.4.5, but not 100% positive
PPS: by the way, while running on verbose mode, got the following: (just typed some suspicious lines - not all)
AppleTyMCEDriver::probe(MacBookPro5,1)
AppleTyMCEDriver::probe fails
Previous Shutdown Causes: 3
AGC: 2.8.15, HW version=1.7.3, flags:0, features:1
IGPU: family specific matching fails
GFX0: " "
GFX0: " "
IGPU: " "
Matching service count = 0
disk0s2: I/O error
localhost fseventsd[28]: event logs in /.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (1073 10 1744)
localhost Symantec Daemon[41]: Validation of a trusted Symantec component failed (-70602)

MacBook Pro 5,1 came with 10.5 Leopard installed, so it has at least that, if not upgraded to 10.6.
See this Apple note: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570 . You've done some of the steps already.
It appears your mother is running Norton Antivirus? or other Symantec programs. If the Antivirus, recommend removing it, and if she wants an antivirus, install ClamXav from http://www.clamxav.com.

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Can't start up; stuck at gray screen- started w/ Skype

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