MacBook Pro :: Won't Start - Stuck On White Screen With Apple Logo

My MacBook Pro won't boot past the white startup screen with the Apple logo. After doing some trouble shooting my best guess is that the issue is either an issue with the logic board or the hard drive, but I am no expert so I may not be right. Here is what I have tried so far. I have done all these steps multiple times and the results have varied, but here are my most recent results:

1) First off, there are no peripherals connected so that is already ruled out as the cause.

2) When I try starting up in safe mode (holding shift while starting), the Apple logo, spinning wheel and progress bar appear. The progress bar fills about a third of the way then stops. I have left it for quite a long time and it still stays at a third of the way.

3) When running a safe boot (holding shift+command+v at startup) it gives me a " SATA WARNING: Enable auto-activate failed" message, and then eventually times out. Here is the full message:

4) Resetting the PRAM (holding option+command+p+r at startup) does the second chime but only results in the flashing folder icon with the question mark.

5) I tried booting up the computer in single user mode (holding command+s at startup) and running fsck -fy, it again gives me a "SATA WARNING: Enable auto-activate failed", then eventually times out. Here is the full message:

6) I tried booting in recovery mode (holding option while starting). When I do this I do not get the OSX utilities screen. Instead I get a white screen, sometimes my hard drive shows up on the screen, sometimes it does not.

If i boot in recovery mode with my osx install disc inserted the disc appears. If I select the hard drive we are just back to the apple logo and spinning wheel. If I select the install disc it goes to the apple logo/spinning wheel again, sometimes it allows me to start running the install, but then when it gets to the step where you select the hard drive to run the install on, no hard drives appear.

So that's where I'm at. I do not care about losing any data because luckily I backed up this machine right before this started happening.