Snow Leopard (10.6.3) Installer Failed, MacBook Shuts off on boot

Hi all,
So a friend of mine recently bought an OOTB Snow Leopard install Disc from Apple and attempted to install OSX 10.6.3 on his MacBook White (I can't remember exactly what version of OSX he was running before but I know it was 10.5.x). Some time into the Installation, the Installer fails with the screen "Install Failed" and under that it says "Mac OSX could not be installed on your computer" with a big yellow exclamation sign. Under that it says " The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance. Click Restart to restart your computer and try installing again."
However, when he restarted and tried to boot up, the computer shuts off after getting to the grey Apple screen with rotating gear. I am not sure why the install failed, but I suspect now it has corrupted the old version of OSX which resided on the hard drive, and is causing the startup to fail. I had him boot from the OSX 10.6 Installation media and run Disk Utility and try to Repair his hard drive (Macintosh HD), but the Repair fails and window pops up "Disk Utility stopped repairing 'Macintosh HD'. Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed up files."
The details of the Repair printed the following:
Verify and Repair "Macintosh HD"
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Invalid node structure
The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely.
Volume repair complete
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk...disk, and restore your backed-up files.
I had him try to run repair a few times to be sure it would not complete, to which he said it failed the same each time. Then I had him try to boot up in Safe Mode, but the boot up was the same, computer powers off after hitting the Apple loading screen. He has confirmed that this could not be due to the battery or overheating. Is there anything else we can try before reformatting the drive? Is there a way to eliminate hard drive failure from the equation and conclude that it is a corrupt OS? I would hate for him to lose all of his data if there are any other options, please let me know.
Thanks,
Matt

Invalid node structure requires a robust disk repair utility such as DiskWarrior 4 - The Disk Utility for Mac Disk Repair, Mac Directory Repair
The pre installed Disk Utility app cannot repair this.

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