Windows Vista Acer Aspier 4530 Black Screen with Arrow

The laptop is an Acer Aspire 4530 6823 with Windows Vista. While her daughter was playing one of her games the game suddenly stopped responding and showed a critical error occurred the game must stop. She tried to perform a system restore. when the machine restarted all that showed was a black screen with an arrow. Starting in any Safe Mode option you get the same result a black screen with arrow. I get the Acer splash screen and can get into BIOS. going try to find the diagnostic mode on the machine. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

No disks at all. She didn't even create a set of recovery disks. Haven't tried Last Known Good Configuration yet. I did try Installing win 7 on the Hitachi Hard Drive that came with machine still black screen with arrow. I put a WD 750GB Hard Drive in and tried to install Win 7 ult. It started to install the OS. I stopped it. So I tried the Hitachi again no install just a black screen and arrow. Going to run Hitachi diagnostics software tomorrow. First I'll try the Last Known Good Configuration you suggested. Will update when done.

 

Last Known Good Configuration didn't work. Still the same black screen with the arrow. Put the Hitachi in a usb hard disk enclosure connected the drive to my HP Notebook then ran the diagnostic software. Passed on all tests. I can access the contents of the drive on the HP, but, on the Acer notebook just get the same black screen and arrow.

 

It doesn't let me get past the black screen with arrow. Tried to find the notebook on the Acer website by searching the SNID:91109146425 and the S/N:LXARE0X126911165482500(0=zeros). Both searches showed No results found. There is a MFG: DATE:0903 Aspire 4530-6823. Windows Vista Home Premium. AMD Athlon X2 64. I told her I could install another hard drive and OS. She liked the idea but instead of Vista she wants Windows 7. I could put the old drive in a USB hard drive enclosure then move whatever data pictures etc. she wants. I told her there shouldn't be any problem finding drivers. I wish people would just take the time to create recovery disks. She's like a sister to me so I don't mind. Thanks for you help so far Evan Omo.

 

I was just told that she tried to start in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with networking, and then Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Shortly after that is when the black screen with the arrow started. Any ideas on how to deal with this.

 

Got the machine running again. Upon startup tapped the F8 key selected System Repair\Command Prompt entered TASKMGR all was well. Next checked srtrui.exe tried to run system restore. A dialog box appeared saying that System restore was already running. Do you want to exit I clicked OK. Restarted Tapped the F8 key chose System Repair\System Restore. Chose an earlier system restore point. When it finished I restarted the machine. Logged In and it went straight to the desktop. Thanks again Evan Omo for your time.

 

You're welcome.