Windows failed to start on laptop; failing harddrive?

Every few months, my girlfriends laptop won't start, and gives the same error.

"
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware of software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1. Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.
3. Choose your language settings, and then click "Next".
3. Click "Repair your computer."

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

Status: 0xc0000001

Info: An unexpected error has occurred.
"

Now, I can easily fix the problem using the repair on the Windows 7 disk, but I feel like that's a bandage for a higher problem. This is about the 3rd time I've had to fix this. She'll be using it perfectly fine at night, shut it off, then the next morning it'll error out. Could this be a sign of her hard drive failing? She takes horrible care of her computer, if anyone could kill a computer hard drive, it would be her. Just want to know if I have her drop the money on buying a new hard drive, if that would solve the issue once and for all, or if it could be related to something else.

I would do a scan of ur hard drive to look for partition errors, corrupted sectors, and others. Windows 7 has a feature that does this I believe

Does the laptop have a diagnostic program under the boot options? Maybe f11 when booting up?

yeah my belief is that you have a corrupted sector or a partition error, both of which are easy to remedy