Vista refuses to load!

[Pookie]

Hi,

I shut down my computer so that it can install updates, however when I came back 2 hours later it was still installing 1 of 1. So I restarted the computer and now after the Vista loading screen the screen dims and goes black! My specs are in my sig. Any help would be very welcome as I'm stuck on my brother's laptop *shudder* .

[Scinto]

its fubar'd..

i assume pressing F8 during boot will show up a list of boot options see if you can get in via safemode and see what the problem is through the event logger,

Control Panel > Admin tools > event viewer,

[Warhawk]

your not supposed to cut power while its installing updates. You may have to do an OS reinstall or try to repair windows files.

[Pookie]

Thanks for your help Scinto and Warhawk. I tried to boot in safemode but it just freezes when loading the drivers. I'm going to install a nice fresh copy of Windows XP but I was wondering if this will delete all of my files. Luckily I have my coursework backed up but the same can't be said for all of my music and game patches etc. Is there anyway to avoid wiping the hard drive?

Thanks,
Pookie

[.Gunfire]

you can delete the partition Vista was installed on but itll delete everything youve done on there

[Pookie]

Damn! I seem to remember that after installing Vista there was a Windows file and a Windows.old file which had all my previous documents in. Is there anyway to do this again? :s.

[camper.]

Yeah, just use the Vista disc and click "Upgrade Install" as opposed to "Clean Install". If it's greyed out, you'll have to do some partitioning.

[CaptainKirk]

http://thevistaforums.com is great with really technical vista quetions. I troll those forums from time to time.

[signa]

oh look what i found.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/15/1536256