Dell Inspiron 1525 not booting (Vista)

[EXCellR8]

One of my friends' laptop is being a bit temperamental. It's a relatively new Dell Inspiron 1525 with Windows Vista Home Premium (32bit) SP1 installed. Anyways, the computer turns on normally but when the OS goes to load it gets stuck at a black screen with just the mouse cursor moving around. Safe Mode doesn't work and the same thing happens if I select "Last Good Config that Worked." I've seen this problem before with updates, but my friend said it was working fine and he didn't install anything.

I popped in the Dell OS disk so I could try a repair/recovery but that was unsuccessful as well. The setup program didn't detect any problems with the OS and there were no restore points to revert back to. I have no idea what the computer is doing when it sits on the black screen. There is a little bit of HDD activity here and there but I think that's the normal behavior. Any ideas? I'm sort of at a loss here...

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[EXCellR8]

If I get a Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 OEM disk can I perform a repair install without being able to boot the OS normally? I can't do anything with this computer at the moment--it just sits and does nothing. I slaved the HDD to another system and was able to read and write normally, so it's definitely a problem with Vista. Problem is I have no idea what is causing the computer to hang so I can't pull any errors and startup repair says there's no problems.

 

[LookinAround]

Don't what your problem is.. but you might also try this if not easy to get the Vista install CD

NeoSmart put together a Vista recovery console (it's legit to download it too )

Also, don't know if you need it, but some info from MS about using Vista Recovery Console

 

[EXCellR8]

I've been using the Recovery Console with the Dell OS DVD but it's not doing anything. It detects no problems with startup and each time I repair the problem persists. I've also done a chkdsk and fiddled with the registry a bit. Nothing. I can't do a Uprade/Repair install of the OS because it wont boot and there are no restore points to revert to. Since I don't know the actual problem I can't really do anything.

Thanks for responding