UPDATE
I was unable to get anywhere with the Samsung Recovery Media disk.
I was able to get to a screen where it looked like I had the option to reinstall Windows 7 (not really sure if that's what it was) or try to repair. I chose to repair and it hung for some time. So I rebooted, checked the F2 (CMOS or BIOS ? ) for the boot order. It had been set, I presume, by my son when trying to fix with Samsung. So all this time it'd had been trying to boot from the dvd drive anyway. I changed order to #1 HDD, #2 DVD. I got to the Windows is starting screen (black with the colored windows logo animation) it did so for about a minute and I saw a BLUE SCREEN flash quickly then it rebooted. BSOD???
I decided to run the Seatools for DOS in the hope it would recognize the Samsung drive and diagnostic test it for errors. It FAILED the short test. SeaTools suggested the long test might repair it. It FAILED the long test and suggested contacting manufacturer for replacement. I've attached screen shots of test results.
Are my conclusions then correct? The Samsung drive is D.O.A.?? unrepairable and unusable??

Hello and thanks for looking at this thread.
A few days ago I started to work on some HDD's and a Samsung NP-QX410 Laptop my son gave me recently. The laptop was not working. Purchased new in 1/12 Win7 Samsung HDD etc....and a Samsung Recovery Disk. After a day of working on it, positive determination the Samsung HDD was terminally defective.
So I moved on to a Seagate Momentous 5400.3 120G HDD that came out of my wife's old HP/Compaq that we gave up on and discarded. So, I installed the Seagate (from 2007) into the Samsung (2012) and after a day of trying to determine it's health and ability, using SeaTools for DOS and Kaspersky bootable AV, discovered the Seagate was alive, free from virus, but had an MBR or similar type issue.
So I managed to access recovery tools on the HDD and reinstalled Vista. It came back to life, yay. Not thinking about possible driver issues (i.e., wifi adapter, network controllers, 3D graphics driver, etc....) I started to navigat, clean bloatware, search for driver as the issue windows popped up.......
So where I am at is:
the OS is working fine, I also installed Vista SP1 from a thumdrive. I've disabled unnecessary startup bloatware and services.
I went to Samsung for Vista drivers for this model laptop. NOTHING. I foung Win7 & WinXP drivers. I downloaded all of them and put folders on the Vista desktop and tried to install them without success (unless I did it wrong). I did go to Intell and download for Vista a Centrino Advance-N + WiMAX 6250 driver which did install correctly. I thought this was for the wireless network adapter but I guess I misunderstood.

So I currently have no controllers for ETHERNET, NETWORK, WIFI ADAPTER,3D GRAPHICS, SM BUS, PCI DATA AQUISITION & SIGNAL PROCESS, PCI SIMPLE CONTROLLER
I have a coup[le dozen screen shots I took and will upload.
I AM TRULY GRATEFUL FOR ANY AND ALL HELP. I'M A NOVICE, BUT AM LEARNING....THANK YOU!!!!