Vista is not booting no matter what i try

[neothemagic]

Several Weeks Ago I updated my laptop and when it restarted it just stoped at this black screen and sat there for hours. I had no clue waht was going with it. I used my gfs computer to look up the problem and that when i stumbled upon your iso recovery disk. So i burnt the image to the CD and thought i was saved. I ran the start-up repair but it took a long to display any results it just said Attempting to repair errors for about 3 days then i cut the laptop off because i do think that was working.
After leaving my laptop shut down in a corner for 3 weeks i decide to give it another shot seeing how i am starting school i kinda need it. I tried do the restore point but it says my harddrive needs to be checkd for errors. i attempted to run the chkdsak for the command prompt no luck. I tried to restore from back-up because i recently back-up my computer so data loss wasn't a big fear. But it states my back-ups were not valid.

I read around 20 forums on the vista boot problem and ended up taking bad advice from on which stated i should overite the system files with the ones found on your disk. I did and now instead of the black screen windows only loads system recovery (which is just a blue screen and mouse) unless i boot from disk.

I bought (yes bought) the HP recovery disk for my laptop from the company hoping my comp would boot it and fix my troubles. didn't work.

I saw the repairing you computer manually via BCD. I tried the command prompt but i don't even know how to change the letters it just says
" <X: SOURCES\> "

So does anyone know how to help me?

Addendum:

For the Record I have tried Safe MOde and Last Known Good configuration

 

[Terry60]

Hi Neo, welcome to NST.
What system files did you overwrite from the recovery disk ?
The recovery disk(s) hosted here are to enable OEM users who weren't provided with bootable recovery media to fix the boot process if they're unable to access their OEM's HDD recovery partition.
They have the spin-off ability to instigate a restore to a previous Vista restore point, but it sounds like your HDD has suffered damage which is preventing that from working.
Try running chkdsk from the recovery console as described by Justin in this post.
If that doesn't work, I think you're in the realms of a factory reset to square 1 from your recovery partition, following the instructions that would have come with your PC.
It doesn't sound as if it's the boot files that are broken, but something more fundamental in Vista, though you don't describe exactly how far you're getting before the failure.
You cannot use the NST recovery disk to fix Vista, which has no equivalent to XP's "repair install", and the CD contains no Vista installation files anyway.
Have you tried the other F8 options apart from last known... and safe ? Isn't there one that allows the boot to proceed a step at a time so you can see where it gets to before hanging ? Or am I just remembering something from W9x !

 

[neothemagic]

I was attempting to try the command prompt sugestion but whenever i turn on my computer and the disk loads up it automaticallies goes to the startup repair and won't close because its attempting to repair errors

 

[Terry60]

What does the documentation which came with your PC tell you to do, to factory reset the PC back the way it was when you bought it ?
What's the nature of the HP recovery disk you bought, and why/how won't it work ?
If it's a bootable Vista DVD, you should be able to put it in the tray, boot the machine, "hit any key", then format and reinstall the OS.
If you can't successfully boot from either the HP disk or the NST recovery disk, have you checked your BIOS to make sure that your optical drive comes before your HDD in the boot sequence ?

 

[JustinW]

Several Weeks Ago I updated my laptop and when it restarted it just stoped at this black screen and sat there for hours...

....I saw the repairing you computer manually via BCD. I tried the command prompt but i don't even know how to change the letters it just says
" <X: SOURCES\> "....

1) I recently had the black screen issue myself, and in this thread I provided a simple fix for those one timers in some cases where Vista decides to blackout on you.

2) X: sources refers to a directory on the Vista DVD you have booted from. In order to navigate to another drive/directory on another drive, use: cd /d <drive letter>:

Looks at this point that a re-install is needed. Unless the HP recovery media you have allows you to do a clean install, find a friend with a Vista DVD. Using it to re-install Vista on your machine is perfectly fine as long as you use the product key on the sticker on your laptop.