Screen stuck on grey apple screen with a loading sign

I thought i had lost my charger and i wasnt willing to fork out the money to buy one for awhile. During a recent move i found it. I charged it up but when i got to my login screen i kept trying to type my password and it wouldnt except it. After looking online i found several posts about click buttons i dont remember what exactly i clicked but it was along the lines of " option and the R key" Another screen popped up and it had several options one of which was to try to do a back up/ restore it through timemachine. I treid that and it wasnt working. I went back to the screen and saw an option that said install the lion thing. i tried that and it didnt work. I was frustrated so i decided it would be best to just shut down my computer and try again when i was less riled up. Well now it has been stuck on the grey apple screen with a loading sign under it for atleast a day now if not longer. I have no idea what to do. I'm not sure if i have apple care or not. Oh and not really sure what operating system i was using.

Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

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