Blue screen of death, no fix or solution.. need help

Got the blue screen of death today. Using Windows 7. Q9450 processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 790i motherboard, nVidia GeForce 9800GTX. I did not install any new programs, change any settings, hook up any new devices or hardware. I woke up, hopped on and started using Firefox to read up on the Haiti earthquake. Clicked a link to a safe news site and Firefox locked up. I couldn't escape and tried opening the task manager via CTRL+ALT+DEL, no luck. Finally the screen faded and the pop-up on the top left corner appeared, asking me if I wanted to cancel the process for Firefox since it wasn't working. I'm guessing this is a new feature to Windows 7, since it's happened to me a few times since I got it. So I canceled the Firefox process through this method and it closed a bit later. But then nothing worked. The task manager still did not appear and I couldn't open anything. The screen faded again and this time it said Windows Explorer wasn't working. I didn't worry because I got this message a few times before. I said yes to cancel, expecting it to reboot itself and start working again like the last few times. But it didn't. Just locked up.

So I turned off the PC via the power button and started her back up. Got to the Windows loading screen. Took longer than usual. Before I even got to the account selection screen, a very quick blue screen of death flashed before immediately restarting.Went through the usual POST stuff. But then it said Windows was experiencing a problem, do I want to repair Windows or start normally. I tried to repair but to no avail - just a black screen. I waited about ten minutes on this black screen and it was later replaced by a blue screen with the Windows logo, and I could move the mouse around, but no options to repair or anything else.

So I then tried to start her up in safe mode. Same thing: quick BSoD, then restart. I can't even read the text of the BSoD, it flashes by so fast. I tried starting her up from my last known good configuration, no go. So I'm not sure what to do. I'm half tempted to just buy a new hard drive and start fresh, or maybe somehow get Linux installed and working. I don't know what to do, so hopefully someone has a solution for my problem. Thank you.