Sorry in advance for the length.

1. Sandybridge machine with OCZ Vertex 2 120gb boot drive crashed today. Upon trying to reboot it kept asking me for a valid boot disk. I powered down, waited and re-started.

2. It booted up BUT... after I log in and the desktop appears I get the endlessly spinning cursor the moment after about 10 seconds into the desktop. IOW: I see the desktop as normal, but after about 10 seconds, the machine freezes. If I drop to the command line before the freeze I can list directories and I see that everything is 'there'. But the moment I try to perform any operation (start a program, copy a file, etc.) it hangs.

3. I opened the case and the OCZ drive has a green ready light and a red error light. Both the green -and- red light are on.

4. I've tried booting with F4 and F5 and F6 and it won't boot into 'Safe' mode. It hangs when I do.

5. I unplugged the OCZ drive and attached to another PC. It is not recognised.

6. I move it back to the original machine and it behaves as before: it boots and then hangs with both the red and green lights on.

7. Now I -thought- the drive was toast BUT here's the other weird thing. It is a client on my network. And from another PC I can 'see' the other HDs on that machine in Windows Explorer. I can even copy files off them. UNFORTUNATELY, the OCZ is not shared so I can't 'see' it, but I assume this means that Windows -is- still running on the PC, right? Perhaps the OCZ drive is just 'spinning' on some program.


QUESTIONS...
1a. I assume the OCZ drive is toast, right? Or can it be rehabilitated? Is there some way to read the files off the OCZ before I trash it?

b. Is there a way to boot Win10 without ANY startup programs or with a 'log' of some kind as in previous versions so I can see where it's getting stuck?

2. I just got the Win 10 'free' update from Win 7 right before the July deadline. I do not have a rescue disk. I have a DVD of the Win 10 install, but nothing with a serial number. So... if I get a new SSD, how will I validate my Win 10 install? Or do I have to buy a new license?

I'm not so worried about a 'backup' as all my data is on a separate HD which is fine. I just need the machine to boot up to Win 10 and then I can re-install what I need.

Thanks in advance.