To sum up, as I see it:
1) Boot the machine and wait until the hard drive light goes out. This may take a while.
2) Wait a bit longer.
3) Eventually the drive light will go out. If it doesn't, your HD is probably dead or dying and the machine is constantly trying to read a bad block. Time to get a new (second hand) HD.
4) If the drive light goes out with no notification, then it's validated. Yay! Now don't turn it off when a file is being written again, ok?
5) If it comes up and says "Read error on volume xxx:" or something
then and only then is it time to worry about other software. I myself have had DiskSalv mess things up, so I use QBTools, but DiskSalv is usually ok if you're careful. Could some kind soul in the States stick a floppy with DiskSalv on into a Jiffy bag and mail him?
And don't worry about the 100% full bit, that's just because it's unvalidated.
