Boot failures and other laptop woes

Two weeks ago i went camping for the weekend...

When i returned home i got on my Lenovo Thinkpad x200 and loaded up my copy of Mount and Blade Warband (my then obsession)

The system requirements for the game seemed low enough for me to play on the laptop so i was shocked when the laptop froze, crashed, then showed the Blue Screen (it was during
one of the text conversation scenes too)

Afterward, every time i booted up the laptop the message "the boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible" popped up.

I tried mounting a Windows 7 install disc to a usb drive (the laptop doesnt have an optical drive) but the installation failed every time

After the failed attempts at a new Windows install, the "boot selection failed..."message no longer appeared

Now, whenever i boot up the computer, there is only a black screen with a white underscore (cursor?) blinking on the top left corner.

Most recently i've made several attempts at installing ubuntu 10.04 on the laptop (using a usb drive) to no avail. The installer ends up hanging on "step 2: Where Are You?"

Also when i just choose to boot ubuntu without installing, the laptop goes to the loading screen (purple background, 5 white and orange dots) for a little over an hour
before the desktop finally loads.

Anyway I'm running out of ideas (didnt really have any idea what i was doing in the first place). I currently have ubuntu booted up (not installed) on the laptop in question,
running windows xp on the spare laptop.

Does anybody have any idea as to what happened to the laptop? Does anybody have a solution?

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and i patiently await your reply.

Your hard drive might have failed when you were playing the game. That would make you believe that it's the fault of the game, but it's probably just a bad coincidence. Have another drive you can put in there to test?

I forgot to ask if you wrote the error code down. That info would quite helpful.

okay the error code for "boot selection failed etc" is 0xc000000f
 but after that i didnt record any other error codes
 
Update: when i described my situation to another tech savvy anon he basically said the same thing you posted (hard drive failure).

I dont have another HDD to test but I'm actually posting this on the offending laptop (booted ubuntu) so i guess that means most of the hardware besides the HDD is safe? I also previously ran ubuntu's memory test and no errors were found.

Thank you for posting so promptly :D

ps another anon suggested that the/a reason why the installation fails or ubuntu loads slowly may be that my ubuntu usb drive is a Sandisk Cruzer with U3 software on it.

I'm assuming you tried another USB drive then, since you were able to boot ubuntu.

Best bet right now is to bug a friend and see if they have one. If not, they're cheap enough to buy from NCIX or Newegg. Good luck.

Thanks a bunch

take out the hard drive and boot ubuntu from pendrive, if you have a big pendrive, you could save your settings and some of your stuff in it for the time being.