Vista PCs nasty crash

So my relatively new, 5 month old vista PC crashed. The data seems to be intact in the drive but the boot sequence seems to do a check disk (chkdsk) and it doesnt complete. I left it running for a week and it was still checking the disk.

Vista's repair PC functionality is a complete Dud! I ran into atleast 2 bugs:
o when i initiate Repair, it just goes on the chkdsk check (although the screens dont tell you that) and runs for days without stopping. Shouldn't such programs detect that they are getting on endless loop, especially if their purpose is to help with disaster recovery?
o I tried to initiate advanced tools, i.e. windows recovery console so that i can get to copy my disk contents to another drive before reinstalling. There is a bug in recovery console initiating sequence where if you selected "Load Drivers" option in that dialog, the system goes into a state where you will no longer be able to start recovery console.

So i googled and found the Ultimate Boot CD for windows
which seems to work like a charm. I needed another working PC for building the Boot CD image. It booted fine and had a number of useful tools for repairing the hard drive, etc.
I used the tools to copy the data that i had in the hard drive.

Another alternative could have been Puppy Linux.

I am going to reinstall vista now and going to buy another internal drive to setup a backup drive. Unfortunately vista home premium doesnt come with a complete pc backup utility.
I need to research for an alternative.