Laptop bites the dust

I have a Samsung X11 Laptop which is no longer under guarantee, it
predates the Vista release date by a couple of weeks so it has been
around for a while. It is set up to dual-boot Linux and XP using
GRUB. The Linus version is opensuse 11.2 x64 - I upgraded from 11.1
x64 two weeks ago.

There is this old problem which has been there since the Motherboard
was replaced years ago - the disc freezes under Linux for around a
minute, then resumes. The logs indicate a timeout but given that
Samsung do not support Linux in any way (and rejected the previous
problem because I had Linux on the system, I had to set the boot
manager to hide Linux) there is nothing I can do about it.

That was then, this is now.

Booting into XP this morning, things started fine but then hung just
when I was trying to input my password. Then BSOD saying that an
essential service had died. I should have written down the code but
did not.
Since then, booting hangs for a while with disc activity at 100%.
Then eventually I get
GRUB
After another long wait, "Loading stage1.5" is added to that line.
After another long wait, I get "GRUB loading, please wait..."
Running from the mains, the screen gets brighter and the fan gets
busy. Unhooking from the mains reverses both effects.

That is it.
So why don't I boot from CD-Rom? The activity light is on and I can't
open the CD-Rom bay.
The Samsung X11 does not have a floppy drive.

I have access to the BIOS, that is all.

At the moment, I can see two ways forward:
1 - Buy a new laptop and use this ide:usb adapter I have to migrate
all essential settings to the new system (building out the disk, no
problem)
2 - Build out the disk, back everything up, make the XP partition the
primary (all via my ide:usb adapter) and send it in to Samsung who
will charge me an arm and a leg to repair it. Given that I had to
drive to their repair facility last time around to demonstrate the
problem - they obviously could not read - I am a bit dubious about
this option.

My assumption is that the IDE controller is dead. Can anyone think of
any way this could be something else? I could possibly set up an old
ide drive to be bootable via that adapter and boot from there but
there does not seem to be a lot of point.

Thanks guys
.