We have a sony Vaio laptop with windows Vista. This am we tried to download "windows critical updates". Several hours later we noticed the download was stalled and we can not reboot the laptop at all now.

I've tried safe mode, but again it freezes at file 32,000 of 89,000 and goes no further.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

The hard drive may have corrupted sectors. Schedule a disk check on next boot up. If this can't be done, the hard drive may be damaged or in need of a low-level format

Below is what I get when rebooting (on the dos screen) At last line system stops running through files. This line is solid then starts to "flash" right to left until whole line flashes then goes solid again. Please help


Checking file system on C:
The volume is clean.

Checking file system on \\?\volume{0273534d-0538-11dc-930b-806e6f6e6963}
The volume is clean.
Windows has finished checking the disk.
! ! 0xc01a001d ! ! 37126/89815 (Registry\Machine\COMPONENTS\DeriveData…)