Cannot access system after dropping laptop - how to fix (don't have recovery disks)?

Question

My wife dropped her L305-S5955 Satellite, Vista32 OS. Miraculously, case is perfectly fine, as is screen. Computer still powers on, too. At first it beeped - just now finding out that this is the "code" as to what is wrong, but we didn't know it then, and we can't remember how many beeps it was. Tried starting in safe mode and running the "Startup Repair", but the message "Windows cannot repair this computer automatically" and "startup repair cannot repair this computer authomatically"....viewing the diagnostic and repair details shows that a number of tests were run, and all of them but one were completed successfully (one failed). Successful was: "check for updates", "system check disk", "disk failure diagnosis", "disk metadata test", "target OS test" and "volume content check".  The "root cause found" was "No OS files found on disk"....the "repair action" was "partition table repair" and the "result" was "failed". I read on another bulletin board that one could check whether one's hard drive was good at the command prompt by typing "chkdsk"....this was one of the first things I did, I should mention, and when I did it, it seemed to pass.
Ideally, of course we would like to have the thing working just as it did before, with all the files intact...but since we can't even get the OS running (she never did make those homemade bootable CD Roms I'm now finding out Toshiba buyers are encouraged to make), she will settle for just getting the computer working again and ultimately losing her files (we believe we have copies elsewhere of the important photos, etc)...but, I have 2 concerns:
1) I don't want to do this step of reinstalling the OS and overwriting everything IF there is ANY way to not have to do this (ie, pulling the hard drive and getting the files off some other cheap way), and
2) that there might be more than just ONE problem here (bad OS)....maybe the hard drive somehow IS also damaged...or something else is. It's true all the tests I mentioned seemed to pass my hard drive, but most of the comments on various bulletin boards I've checked give me pause here...they all seem to almost guarantee my hard drive is toast....some advise to find the make of the hard drive, go their website and download the special, specific diagnostic test software to thoroughly test the hard drive...could it be that doing this could in fact reveal a problem that other tests thus far have not..?! I'm not incredibly computer literate and Hitachi page seemed a bit confusing to me...not sure what to download. I also should mention that when I ran the "Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool" (also built into the Satellite, as one of the several recovery tools on the "System Recovery Options" page), it apparently passed that, too.
When I try to run "Windows Complete PC Restore", I get the mssg that "windows cannot find a backup on this computer"...."a valid backup location could not be found".
I am currenty trying to run "System Restore" (many different dates were shown)....but is it supposed to take a very long time (several hours or more??)....it has been going for 10 minutes already, saying it's restoring files, but 
my wife said she tried this too, and that it ran for about 2 hours but she accidently bumped the computer and it stopped running (so we're not sure if it was successful or not).
Lastly, I wanted to mention that I already tried removing the back plates and checking the memory cards and hard drive to make sure they were securely seated (they seemed to be)...I even pulled them out slightly and reseated them to be sure....someone on a buletin board mentioned this can be the cause sometimes of things not loading after physical shock such as being dropped.
Hopefully this is enough info that someone might have a very good idea what the computer's issue is, and how to best fix it. Should I buy the bootable OS disks from Toshiba (someone wrote that they can be had for $25 or so?). Or can this be downloaded from Microsoft? It seems like it should be FREE, since it was already paid for when we bought the laptop! Should I use the "TOSHIBA Recovery Wizard" ? Again: if absolutely necessary (how to 100% verify this?), we'll overwrite the hard drive and lose our files, but I just want to be sure...and also that I'm not trying to load it onto a hard drive with some hidden problem.
Many thanks in advance...

Answer 1

Update:  I tried the "Toshiba Recovery Wizard" after everything else either fizzled out or hung up. After going all the way thru the recovery process (up to 100%), I finally got an error message.....it didn't work. And now, when I fire up the computer, I don't even get to that menu with the recovery options....the only thing I can boot into is the screens with the various ways to run your OS (in "safe mode", "safe mode with networking", etc).
I'm not a techie, but I'm guessing at this point, the part of my hard drive that got damaged in the fall was, at the very least, the partition with the recovery data. Couple that with the fact that this cheapo Toshiba laptop didn't even come with recovery disk (or ANY kind of disk, even basic installation software!), I'm screwed: I don't see any way to get a workable computer now without some kind of disk to boot from. So NOW my concern is more about spending the $$ for a new OS and THEN finding out the hard drive has other problems too...is broken in some other way to boot.
How to check this? As I said, I did run "chkdsk" back when I could get into the recovery menu and run the fix-it programs. It didn't note any problems. Thinking of taking this opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista (which I never liked), but I have to know that the computer is otherwise ok....how to be sure? Help!!