Grey screen, loading circle... Stuck, think I made a boo boo.

Hello guys,
Firstly I'd like to admit I'm an idiot for thinking the OS could deal with this. I have an early aluminum MB, 2.4 (before they named it the pro), Leopard & Windows 7.
My issue - I installed Win7 aaaaages ago and just started re-using it recently to play The Sims 3. The partition is tiny as it was just an experement to see how Win7 would work. So I go to install The Sims and it tells me there isn't enough room, so I store the program files on an external. It crashed a bit and then I come up the genius plan of installing MacDrive 8 so I can store the files on the OS partition.
I played that for a day or two, now when I go to boot into OS X... Yup, you got it, grey screen with loading circle.
I've tried:
Booting into Safe Boot
Reseting the PRAM
Removed RAM I installed a few days ago
My superdrive discontinued to work 12 days outside my warrenty, but I've arranged to borrow a USB CD drive this weekend and I've located my original disks in perfect condition, so I should be able to do a disk ulitity on it this weekend...
MacDrive had a repair program which I used but the error 'MacDrive was unable to verify *insert HD name here* because an error occurred' but couldn't tell me the error.
I'm still able to view all files from Win7 so it's got to be a start up software thing right?
I'm expecting insults but if I can get it going again I'm be pretty chuffed... and a lesson learnt well

This is the one I followed. Unfortunately, my super drive doesn't work and I've tried a USB drive too, but its the same issue.
Do you know of a download I can boot from? One that doesnt need to boot from an optical drive.

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