Can't Boot Into Xp Pro

[adams]

well i was just browsing a little while ago and my computer locked up. couldn't move the mouse and hitting down ctrl + alt + delete wouldn't do anything either.

So i rebooted and it just hung on the windows is starting up screen (where the blue boxes move), so i pushed the reset button again, this time after the post it said it couldn't read from the disk. So I pushed ctrl+alt+delete and rebooted yet again. This time I booted into safe mode w/networking and looked at my 80gb cause that is where most of my important stuff is and it seems to be ok. So I restarted (using start, shutdown method) and tried to boot into xp again. It hung on that screen again (I let it be like that for a good 5 minutes and nothing happened). So now I'm typing this in safe mode w/networking. Now one of those times when it was starting up the hard drive sounded horrible, like it was grinding against something (not its normal sound).

Does all this mean my hd is dead or what? Is there anything I can do about it? (It's not under warranty anymore. Probably over 3 years old.) It's a 40gb Seagate. Is there any tests I can run on it to check it?

specs:
windows xp pro
512MB 3200 DDR
40GB seagate hd
80gb maxtor hd
120gb maxtor hd
athlon xp 2500+ (barton)
geforce 2 ti 64mb ddr
(that should be everything important)

thanks in advance.