Area51 m7700 wont even let me access bios Help!!!

Hello,
So this morning I was doing some programming for a friend which involved the creation of hundreds of midi files at one time. My alienware seemed to be fine with it until it froze while playing one of the files. After I tried to boot it up it would work every three trys or so, on the third it would sometimes allow me to log onto my computer, and then freeze again not much later. On the other times it would get to the loading screen just after the alienware logo appears at initial boot, and hang at the "detecting...._" phase never doing anything.
Well i decided to give it some time to cool off thinking it may have overheated, although it never had during the year and a half that I've had it. When i tried to start it up again later tonight, it would load windows, allow me to open up webbrowsers and such, and then it would freeze up completely.
It has not gotten to the point where it will not let me access the bios on the computer and even when it did, it had not as far as i can remember change the ATA configuration of my harddrive to RAID, as i've read on here in many posts. It eventually started flashing the '"Operating system not found" black screen in between semi-sucessful boots.
Finally, it is now only loading the initial alien ware boot screen from which point it just displays a black screen, I am not able to access the bios and, safe mode, or any other type of mode. All the fans begin to spin, so it almost sounds as though it will boot up, but never does.

Here are my specs:
Alienware m7700
Pentium 4, 3.6 gHz
3 GBs of ram (two 512 sticks and two 1 GB sticks)
Single harddrive not sure of exact kind, rpm 7200 or 7400

The computer was always cooled with one fan, however it did get quite hot. I left it plugged in for at most 6-7 hours at a time, which I realize now, probably isn't good. Does this problem sound more like a harddrive problem, or a mother board problem. If it is a motherboard problem, has any one had any success with z*tronics (http://stores.ebay.com/Ztronics-Store), I am not too far from them and it seems to be cheaper than a lot of other places.
Any idea's, suggestions? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am a full time student who greatly depends on this laptop.

Also, my laptop is in very good condition, what type of price range would I be able to get with and without fixing. I love my alienware but I don't want to go through this again, I have no time to be out of a computer

Alright so i avoided calling alienware support from past experience that was literally of no help, but I decided to, just as a last resort. A guy named andrew helped me out, what he told me to do was to unplug my computer, take out the battery and hold the power button for ten seconds. This drains all the power from the computer. Once you do that try to plug the computer back in preferably without the battery. Mine booted up, which alllowed me to see that it was the harddrive that was my problem, since after my computer was on for a while it decided to freeze again and then it turned off. The solution is to buy a new harddrive. So if you have the same problem as me, do not automatically assume its the motherboard because from what i understand that's a huge hassle and this is just a minor 100 dollar change rather than 600+.

I was amazed to see that the support team could actually be helpful, I told them to put this on their support website because a lot of people seem to be having the same problem, I haven't bought my new harddrive yet but I will, and if i still have problems i'll post here to help aid in the troubleshooting of future m7700s