What version of Vista are you running? Has Vista ever worked on this pc? What speed is your cpu?

http://www.microsoft.com/windo.....ments.aspx

Since you bought the laptop two years ago, I am assuming you installed the OS yourself. Which leave three questions.

1) Did the install complete
2) Has it ever worked with Vista
3) Did you install anything recently

The most likely cause is either a driver or graphics card

First and foremost, do you have the vista media

You wil need to locate the vista media to run the windows Vista recovery option. Let us know when you have this and someone should be able to talk you through the process of running the best option for recovery based on the answered to teh above question

Regards, Alan

Did you find the hardware tests in the BIOS?

Sorry, my mistake. I directed you to the wrong place. Let's start again: When Compac shows up, you have to go to the BOOT MENU (maybe F12 - but could be different on your system). There you may find the "Utility Partition" - usually last in the list that shows your (possible) boot devices. In this utility partition you will find the diagnose programs I talked about. Note: In the boot menu you can only navigate with the up/down and left/right arrows and ENTER (no cursor).
It is, however, possible that your PC manufacturer did not provide the said utilities. In that case, we'll have to regroup.

Hmm, there is not much to work with. You may have to reinstall your Vista. Do you have an installation disk from Compac or one you burnt from your recovery partition. Or do you still have a functioning recovery partition (usually D:\). We'll have to pick up the pieces tomorrow. It is midnight in my neck of the woods.
PS: Also list which important programs (like security programs, browsers, etc.) you have installed yourself. And let me know whether you have an external disk or at least a 4GB USB stick to which we could save your data.

Let's try this: Type REC into the Start/search field. See whether there is an entry above that says "Recovery disk creation". If yes, go there and follow the wizard. You have to have 2 DVD-R's (not CD's) handy to burn your Vista installation/recovery disk from there.
If that does not work, go to "Computer" and double click on the D:-disk. Tell me what you see in there (folder names).

Maybe you have a functioning recovery partition. The only way to find out, is to try it. As things are, you would loose all your data though. There are ways to save it with some Linux program loaded from CD. But I have never done that myself. If you have data to save, wè'll have to ask some friends how to do that. For the reinstallation of Vista from the recovery partition, I give you a little write-up that was made for a Gateway/E-Machines system. But the procedure is about the same for all Vista's. Note that point #1 we would have to address as said above.

1. Copy all your own files and folders to an external storage (Disc, USB stick even SD card - 1 GByte capacity should be ample - even 512 MB)
2. Shut the PC off
3. Turn the PC back on and keep hitting the F8 key repeatedly until the Advanced Boot Option Screen appears
4. Click "Repair Your Computer" –if you are not already on it, use the up and down arrows to maneuver to it and then press ENTER
5. Next you have to pick your country and click OK
6. On the "System Recovery Options Screen" click "Restore Application" (last option)
7. Follow the on-screen instructions
8. When prompted, click on "Full Factory Recovery"
9. Click "Next"
10. Click "Yes"
11. Go and have a cup of coffee - don't touch anything - for a while it seems like nothing is happening
12. After many minutes, recovery will complete and you click "Finish

You may have a problem with your disk. Unfortunately there is little we can check since nothing seems to run. I would like to check that though. I think it is possible using some Linux iso disk. Unfortunately I am not really an expert in that. If it is OK with you, I will post your problem on the Forum such that the Linux guys can help us.
1. You apparently have another PC with which you could burn a disk - right?
2. Do you have data on the defunkt system that needs to be saved - if the disk allows to do that?

jcritchie, the best testing that you will be able to do involves creating bootable media on another computer system. If you know Windows and don't know Linux, make yourself a bootable VistaPE disc. Instructions and a download link are available here:
http://www.vistape.net/

You can test the hard drive(s) using diagnostics from the manufacturer. The manufacturer's name should show up in the BIOS where it identifies the hard drives.

Can you confirm that in your boot menu it says, "HDD Group - RAID 0"? RAID 0 (zero) means two discs with data striped between them. If that's what you have, then it complicates things.

In the Boot Menu it says "3rd Boot Device HDD Group". I can acess a page that says "Phoenix - Award Bios Cmos Setup Utility" that has pages you can go to. It has "Main, Advance, Power, Boot, Exit". I can also access the Boot Menu that says "Select a Boot First Device, HDD Group - Raid-o Samsung (numbers) CD-Rom Group - 3rd Master: (letters & numbers)" When I push the F11 key for System Recovery I get a white bar going left to right and then a black screen except now it's turned blue with the mouse pointer on it which had disappeared some time ago. I'm leaving it on for a while to see what happens.