Yes, the HDD is starting to fail with 24KBs of bad sectors reported.
This will be why the Startup Repair took as long as it did and failed to repair.
Was that chkdsk done with the recovery built in chkdsk or with a chkdsk /r from the cmd prompt ?
Does the recovery cmd prompt have a x:> prompt ?
The shutdown cmd also failed at my recovery cmd prompt as well but I normally enter exit to close the cmd window and then click on either the Shutdown or Restart buttons.
I find your HP recovery set up puzzling.
If you did it from Safe Mode with Command Prompt then it should have worked, but you must enter the cmd correctly -
shutdown /r /t 00
with a space before each forward slash and a space before the double zero after the /t
Can you run another chkdsk c: /r to see if it reports it is still repairing files etc. ?
If it says the volume is okay, then run another Startup Repair, but the HDD will fail eventually and you should create a full system image onto external media before it does so that after the HDD replacement, you can restore it back to the way it was, but working.
You would also need to create a System Repair Disk which can be done on your wife's machine if it is also a Win 7 one, but it must match your 32 or 64 bit architecture.
If you don't have any personal stuff on there and you are able to reinstall any paid for programs, then you could purchase a set of OEM Recovery Disks from HP for your model which will take it back to out of the box, but this involves time consuming work with Windows Updates, updating the likes of Java and Adobe - uninstalling older versions of Java - reinstalling your programs and if applicable, a printer.
You could of course put it into a repair shop and ask them to do it all for you which would take the pressure off you.
However, I recently had occasion to recover an older Toshiba Win 7 laptop with a bought OEM Recovery disk for trouble shooting purposes and on the envelope it came in, it said that it didn't include MS Works which came pre-installed on that laptop - if you went with loading the new HDD with an OEM Recovery disk, you could then restore that with the system image you have created which will save a lot of work.
PS - One advantage with hearing problems is that you won't hear the wife nagging you or asking to you to do this that or the other
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