Vista startup error

[coachjason]

Hi. I have an HP Pavilion dv6810 running windows vista sp1. When I shut it down this morning, I accidentally unplugged it before it completed shutting down. When I restarted it this evening, it performed a startup repair and restarted. It will begin like normal, but then it will stop on a black screen with only mouse control ability. Since Vista came with my laptop, I tried downloading the repair ISO on another machine. I burned it to a disk and ran it on my machine but nothing has changed. The machine will not start in safe mode and will not let me do a system restore (it says I have not made any restore points which I know is untrue).
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Mark56]

First I would run diagnostics on your hard drive before attempting anything else. Follow this guide.

Meanwhile try to borrow a Vista disc or get Recovery discs from HP (if available). The Vista disc must be the same version as you have installed and be at the same service pack level or higher.

You should always make Recovery discs when you buy a new or second hand PC.

Identify the make of your hard drive and then use one of the links below to get the manufacturers diagnostic for ISO CD. Burn the image file to a CD, boot the PC with the disc in the drive and run the diagnostics. You first need to set the CD drive to 1st in the boot order in the Bios setup.

If you do not have an image burner use this free software to make the CD.

http://www.isoimageburner.com/


ExcelStor: http://www.excelstor.com/eng/support.php?sub_id=3

Hitachi/IBM: http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/

Samsung: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/downloads/support_in_es.html

Toshiba Fujitsu: http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=SoftwareUtilities#diagnostic

Seagate, Maxtor & Quantum:http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads

Western Digital:http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en