Laptop will not boot (Vista)

[badams59]

My daughter's laptop (HP) will not boot. It was working sporadically. I booted it, and ran Windows Update because I wanted to make sure it was up do date and then I would run anti-virus. During the update the computer went dead so I assume the updates were interrupted. I cannot get even to safe mode. The computer did not come with a Vista disk. Is there any way to create a Vista boot disk and try to boot up this computer? I can get to BIOS but cannot find anything that helps. Thanks.

 

[Ent]

A vista disk won't boot up the computer, it will install Windows Vista onto it. Doing so has a very high chance of wiping everything off the computer. If the updates were indeed interupted then you aren't likely to boot that machine without reinstalling, but first have a look here about the chance of recovering her files.

 

[TerryNet]

The HP laptop almost certainly came with a Recovery partition. Tapping the F11 key (I think it's the same on all recent HP laptops) at turn on should get into that. Or, use the set of Recovery disks if you or she made them.