Can't get into safe mode or recovery MBP

Looking for a lifeline!!I have a mid 2009 13" MBP with OS X v 10.8. Started acting up and had to do a forced reboot. Got the grey linen screen with my username but no box to enter a password. Put into safe mode and through disk utility did a " verify and repair" with apparent success Rebooted and same thing again, no box for my password.. Went into the recovery partition...was asked to choose my language ( English, right?. And got the OS X UTILITY box with four options. It would let me select any of them or " continue"
I'm not backed up ( I know, I know) so recovery is essential. Don't remember if the machine came with an install disc but if it did....I don't have it.

H-e-l-p???!!!!

It sounds like hard drive problems. Try to find your original Leopard disks that came with the machine or Snow Leopard disk (whichever one you had) and boot with it using Disk Utility to verify if the hard drive is defective. If you can't find your original disk and recovery is not working, you'll probably wind up having to swap out the hard drive. Which means you'll have to download Mountain Lion again from Apple. But you might lose all your data because you had no backup.

Thanks for the fast reply. I don't have my disk so I think I'm outta luck in terms of saving my data?
If I buy and install a new hard drive I can then got onto Apple and install Mountain Lion right?

Appreciate the help!!

If I buy and install a new hard drive I can then got onto Apple and install Mountain Lion right?

Click to expand...

Yes. Once you've purchased Mountain Lion, you can download it again without having to pay once more. This time, after downloading and before installing it, create a bootable Mountain Lion flash drive. Check out this LINK to learn how.

UPDATE: I just found my snow leopard disk...since its an older version I can safely install it right?

Thanks for the link...I don't make the same mistake twice!!

Good for you - finding your Snow Leopard disk. Yes, that should work to install. Let us know how it goes.

Hey there. Need some additional help. Dropped the snow leopard install cd into the drive and now can't get past the "Install Mac OS X To set up the installation of snow leopard click continue" Wont allow me to click anywhere on the screen : .
"Continue" button, file , edit , utilities or windows.
I also cannot eject the disc or get the computer to go into safe mode.
Broke down and bought a new hard drive and get the same results. Did a fsck -f and it appears the new hard drive was installed successfully.
Help!!!!????

installing os on blank drive

Hi I'm new to Mac's. I have an "early 2008" macbook, the drive crashed which is why the owner gave it to me. on startup i get a grey screen with the apple icon before it shuts down. I swapped harddrives and was succesful in installing windows vista so i figure the rest of the unit is ok. on the apple site they list mountain lion as an "upgrade" will it work as a fresh install as well? I have no discs whatsoever. may have found the answer by using the above "link" posted by chscag. thanks