If it was in such bad condition and there was such uncertainty it would boot up again, why didn’t you save your **** before rebooting and running chkdisk? You were told to back up your files right off the bat.

There’s a possibility that if you reinstall Vista over the same partition without reformatting, you can access your files (and SAVE them, and then get a new drive). If the drive’s too damaged, it probably won’t work. Otherwise, you can pay someone to try and recover your files. Make the dumb **** that broke it pay for the new drive/data recovery, as she is legally liable anyway.