Mac OSX freezes at startup

Question

Today, my macbook froze while trying to open a adobe file. Force quite wouldn't work, so I pressed the power button. When I go to restart it simply stays at the apple logo screen with the progress circle. After searching around a little, I decided to start up in single user mode. I end up getting this never ending message
jnl: updatefsblock: error reading fs block #42** (ret 5)
disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (Undefined)
* Number is different every time
I tried putting my install disk in and was ready to re-install, but no hard drive ever even comes up. Disk Utility just stays searching also. I know this sounds like a hardware issue, but FWIW this computer stays on a computer desk and is hardly ever moved.

Answer 1

Hi Drew, and a warm welcome to the Forums!
I know this sounds like a hardware issue, but FWIW this computer stays on a computer desk and is hardly ever moved.
Unfortunately, that's not the big factor.
Laptop drives are the shortest lived of all drives.
Might try this, restart your computer, hold down Command+s and type in the following:
/sbin/fsck -fy
then Enter
repeat until no errors.
It really sounds like the HD died though.
If DiskWarrior can't fix it, you might try Data Rescue II...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
(Has a Free Demo to see if it could or not, but you'll need another drive to recover to).
Or FileSalvage...
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?%20mainpage=product_info&productsid=1
to recover what you can.
My advice, get an external Firewire drive, install OSX to that, boot from that, try to recover what you can.