Windows Vista Unable to run anything

A friend of mine recently dropped their laptop. When they first dropped it, it worked fine, windows loaded etc, however, they went back to it 20 minutes later to find it was just a blank screen. I've tried looking at it, to figure out if its the hard drive or not, but to no avail - the only thing that does load is the laptops startup screen, and I'm able to get into bios. Occasionally it will come up with the Windows Boot Manager where I can select Vista or Memory Diagnostic - the latter works, Vista doesn't.

I've tried putting a USB with Spinrite on to check for hard drive errors etc, but it won't load the USB.

I've tried putting a Linux disc in, won't load the linux disc, and I've tried putting a windows disc in, won't load the windows disc. So basically, I'm stuck with a laptop that will show the Sony Vaio screen, and let me load BIOS, otherwise nothing.

If anyone has any ideas, then that'd be appreciated.

 

Does it detects hard disk & DVD in the BIOS ?

 

Yes, it does. Since making that post, I've had a message come up. Winload.exe or something is either missing or corrupt? It advises using a disc to run the repair console, but unfortunately, I'm not able to run a disc.

 

The first order of business would be take the data off the hard disk. If you can lay your hands on external USB DVD drive, you can boot a Linux live cd & copy the data to a USB flash drive.

Most probably both hard disk & DVD got trashed when the notebook fell.

 

I have a CD drive that goes into the laptop from the same model, so will try that and see if it works with it.

 

Resolved that part of the issue. When the laptop was dropped, it was dropped onto the side that holds the disc drive, and subsequently that was damaged. Have replaced it and can now boot from disc.

Now, tried running a startup repair to get around the issue, but it failed. Have decided to just reinstall Windows, however, whenever I've tried thus far, after the "installing windows" box, where it has Expanding files, installing features etc, it says something like "Windows cannot prepare the system for reboot" or something?

AFAIK, this is something to do with the hard disk controllers, but I can't find them anywhere. Any other ideas?

 

Before loading Windows, check the hard disk thoroughly with manufacturer's disk utility.

I also see that you have Spinrite. Now would be a good time to use it.