Macintosh HD greyed out and won't repair or mount; no Admin privilege in ML on USB

Hi everyone I am not a specialist by any means, but I have been trying to help my friend fix his Macbook aluminum after a disaster installing Mountain Lion.
After attempting to install ML over Snow Leopard on the Macbook, I was not able to install it except to a USB key (painfully slow). It was stuck in an installation loop, wherein it would not go back to SL nor would it go forward with ML on the Macintosh HD.
The Macintosh HD is greyed out in disk utility and cannot be mounted or repaired, it gives the "Invalid catalog PEOF" response.
Attempting to boot from HD now gives the flashing ? folder.
Booting from the USB key, I cannot even modify anything because for some reason Mountain Lion installed without any Admin accounts! This created a huge new problem in addition.
This is a very frustrating problem and I am trying to do my best to at least rescue his data from the HD. No we have no money at present for Disk Warrior.
Any help is greatly appreciated because this is seriously perplexing for me and also frustrating for my friend.

1) In a Finder window, select the Macintosh HD. Can you see the contents? If yes, you can select to drag over files.
2) Download SuperDuper (free) When it opens does it recognize the internal drive in the popup? If yes, you will need to make a second portion on your external drive for the clone of your internal drive.
3) If you can't see the contents or the drive in Finder or SuperDuper then you will need to download and run Mavericks over the internal drive.

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Macintosh HD greyed out and won't repair or mount; no Admin privilege in ML on USB

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