Stuck in recovery loop at startup

[SLHauper]

Hello. I'm hoping you can help me avoid the sledgehammering my laptop is begging for. My skill level with the hammer far exceeds my skill with computers, so I'm getting pretty close to doing it. If you can ignore my frustration/anger in this post, I'd greatly appreciate any help.

I was trying to reformat my computer. I tried it through the command prompt but it didn't work.

So I hit f12 during start up to switch from booting from the HD to booting from my system recovery disk. Since the computer came with Vista, I didn't get a Vista disk because no one ever gets one anymore, despite paying for it.

I started from the disk, and hit R to restore. The screen reads -- 'Preparing System Recovery Options' -- after which I assume a utility to do that loads. Then I get a blue screen that reads: A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you've seen this message blah blah blah, run CHKDSK/F, restart computer.

So I turned off the computer, turned it back on, hit f12 to switch it back to booting off the HD. Then I hit f8 to boot in Safe mode, but instead, the computer goes straight to the 'Preparing System Recovery Options' screen, starts the utility and I get the blue screen again.

I pulled the battery out for a while, tried again, same deal. So I don't have any options once the computer starts (other than hitting f2 or f12, f2 being the setup utility and f12 the boot menu).
While I would enjoy going Office Space on this laptop, I'd rather not have to. Can anyone help? Thank you in advance