Computer Boots to "Starting Mac OS X..." Screen and Won't Go Further

Hi all,
My battery started dying in the summer and I didn't have the money for a replacement, so slowly it dwindled down to holding 20-40 minutes a charged. One day I shut it down after I had been using it and I was away from the charger, with only had a few minutes left of battery. I left the computer shut down for a few days, and I ordered a new battery. After I had charged it with the old battery I attempted to boot it.
The first time it only booted to the grey screen. I let it sit around 30 minutes, then held down the power off button. I let is sit again, then turned it on again. This time it got the "Starting Mac OS X..." screen, but the blue bar only loaded about 1/3 of the way before freezing. I shut it down again and left it alone because I had to leave.
Between that day and when I received the new battery, I tried to boot it about 10 more times, each time it would go to the Starting screen and usually load the blue bar entirely but it would never load any further. I left it plugged in and on that screen for about 5 hours one day, hoping it might boot.
I realized this was probably a hard drive issue, but hoped it might be the battery by some fluke. I received my new battery this week and it is still doing the same thing.
Is this the hard drive? What should I do?

Normally you hold down "C" while booting up to boot to a disc. Another way is to boot up normally and then go to System Preferences>Startup Disk and select the disc as the start up disc and hit "Restart.
Something else you might also try is a PRAM reset followed by a Safe Boot:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379?viewlocale=en_US
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455?viewlocale=en_US
If none of this helps, please post back.
Good luck!

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