hello my computer has stopped working all that apears on the screen is a
black page that i dont understand. ive attached some pictures so you can see what i mean
i hope you can help me fix this thanks

Something is wrong with your bootloader. Either some of the files it needs are missing or corrupt. Question: do you have Vista & XP installed? Not all of that makes sense especially if you don't have XP (or some other system) installed. If you know what you are doing you can possibly use the command line to restore the boot loader however that is very tricky to do & I don't even know how to do it. The easiest thing to do is to get your vista disk & boot into it & look for a recovery or automatic repair feature which might or might not work or even be there. Your best bet is just to reinstall Vista.

You are going to need 1 of your windows disks to do this fix.
1. Put Disc in drive

2. Startup PC

3. Let the PC run into the CD

4. Choose the Recovery Console

5. Type you admin username

6. Type your admin password

7. Type Fixmbr

8. Type exit

9. Eject Disc

10. Load windows !

11. Enjoy !

hi thanks for all the info i tried install windows xp from a cd as when i bought my laptop vista was already installed i didnt get a vista cd. this what happens when i try to repair windows

That sounds like your bios isn't recognizing your hardrives . Go into your Bios and go to drives section and see if your bios shows the gigabytes of your hardrives and the make and model.

I am hoping the error message about incorrect connected hardrives and hardware configuration is because your bios was somehow changed because worse case scenario is that your hardrive failed. townsbgs' post about reinstalling XP from scratch might apply here, Although if your bios is recognizing your hardrives you should be able to get into windows using a linux disk to retrieve any files to USB to save any important files ,drivers etc in case you gotta do a complete clean reinstall.

Your original problem of Windows not booting up may be hardrware related instead of software related. If there is a auto detect drives funtion in your bios you may have to run it. If the drive has been turned off or unenabled you will have to enable it. If floppy or network is first on the boot order sequence instead of cd or hardrive that will also create problems. As a last resort setting bios back to default settings will correct these problems, sometimes it just makes it the same. On my IBM the default bios settings change my boot order to network first so my machine wouldn't boot till I shuffled around the boot order. Plug and play should be enabled also. Looks like you will be posting bios screens next.

What is quirking me is your first post showing grub for DOS and then your choice of Windows operating systems to boot. I am assuming but am not rightly sure that that menu sits in the hardrive yet Windows states that no hardrives are detected. I don't see how that is possible. I don't run Windows so I am used to a different set of rules. I am confused by this.

Just want to say that vista repairs itself from the hard drive and not with a disk, there will be a key on your keyboard that will allow you to restore factory settings for vista

thank for all the help ive got my laptop up and running now i will recomend to anyone with pc troubles
oh and i wont leave a pic this time.

Andy, how about sharing how you went about fixing this problem as I am sure other members would like yo know for future reference. Happy Trails, rokytnji