I’m pretty sure at this point also. The behavior kinda points to it and I will note that the computer had a tendency to “hang” when I was using it in the past, and I’ve had other computers with old, corrupted hard drives do the same thing.

I can’t get it to boot the OS install disk either. Gave me this:
win32k.sys - Address BF8A1E6 base at BF800000, DatStap 3d6de5e5

If others are fairly certain of this, would it be possible for me to get any data recovered off of it by an expert? My brother is really desperate get a few documents off of it, though I don’t think it’s anything too important, he just thinks it is.