ok,
what happens when you try to boot?
does it blue screen? does it stop loading? where? at the vista logo? at the logon prompt? after you type the user and pass?
It doesn't blue screen, it appears to be loading Vista, in that it has the black screen with the progress bar (no Windows logo though).
it then changes to an Acer screen and asks to please wait a moment, then luanches startup repair.
This then after a few minutes, states it cannot fix and the diagnostic logs state that the cause of the problem cannot be determined.
ok....did you try last known good configuration and safe mode?
ok, please try safe mode and tell me what file it stops at
ok, that dll is to let the hardware report errors....you sure your hardware is ok....have you tried to boot with fewer memory?
how many memory sticks do you have? 1 or 2?
Just removed one of the sticks and restarted, but same result.
ok....have you tried with the other one?
and again.....when memory fails....it generally just does so when it is being utilized....it generally fails at the same point when booting an OS for instance....
other than memory, I cannot think what else could be wrong (if this happened after installing updates, I highly doubt it that it is hardware indeed, but memory sticks are worth the try).
your next option is to run a repair with the CD/DVD OR install a parallel operating system (better off if you do it in a secondary partition) and to clean up the mess from there.....although sometimes is not possible to do so...depends on the actual issue.
Good thing is taht you can install any OS that reads NTFS, not necessarilly the same version.
if worst comes to worst and you cannot recover your installation, at least you can access the data and move it to a safe place for reinstallation.
another thing you can do is to use your disc as a secondary disk in another computer (there's cases to use the disk as secondary through the pcmcia port of another laptop or usb/firewire/SATA port in a desktop.
other than that....no options that I can think of.
sorry for the news...but them being bad does not make them untrue! :(
Computer Support Specialist
MCSE all flavors, MCITP, Comptia A+, Security+, Networking +, Windows Internals Certified