Oh windows 7 how I love you, or not.

Okay so I've come here to maybe help troubleshoot this nasty little problem my fathers computer is having, he has the same computer as me a Dell Inspiron 560ES with windows 7 4gb ram and a 2.6 ghz processor and records alot of music on it with external objects (He has alot of vinyls well he bought a thing to turn vinyls into Mp3 music so he could make backups of all his music) and yesterday it just gave him what I call a black screen of death. Its a screen that looks like when you shut windows down in the middle of a proccess where it says start windows in safe mode, start normally, etc etc.
EXCEPT this screen says that there is a Hardware or Software problem and windows couldn't start and needs repaired, the two options are, let windows repair itself, or start windows normally. So he was all bummed out and I took a look at it, at first I clicked start normally, no dice, it took me back to the same screen. Next I click repair, after about 45 minutes it basically said windows could not repair itself and to seek further help. So yeah, he hasn't downloaded, installed any programs, or connected any major or minor new hardware lately either (Save for a face camera he connected for like video chat) it just turned to that screen he said. So I come to you PC/hardware forum for help, has anyone had this problem and how may you have fixed it? I really want to fix this for him because he just seemed so depressed, he has litterally thousands upon thousands of hours of music and was on like his 2000th CD and now ALL of that music is gone. Its just sad to see him like this.
Casey.