Laptop not booting

[superninja19]

Hi, my laptop has the windows/system32/config/software so I knew i needed a install disc to repair my computer but I tried using the windows vista ultimate from my main PC to repair the laptop which has windows vista home and all i got was a black screen with a flashing cursor. Does this mean I cant repair my laptop with ultimate(also I don't know if this means anything but on the back of windows vista ultimate case it says OEM software)? Any help appreciated!

[Darthgumby]

I would think Vista would include a backup partition you can recover from?  Do you see any prompts at startup taht say something like "Press 'R' for recovery" or "Press F12 for help?"  Have you tried using F8 to boot to safe mode?  How far can you boot before it won't go any further?

Is your BIOS set to boot to CD first?  If it is reading the disk, at the very least you would get a "Press Any key to boot from CD" instead of just a blinking cursor.

[superninja19]

Only things that pop up are press esc to change boot order and press f10 to enter setup. Also I did check the bios and it is set to boot to cd first but I decided to check if any other cds would work so I put in my old windows XP recovery disc and sure enough it showed the "Press Any key to boot from CD"(but doesnt let me do anything else since this laptop is vista lol) so I guess my other disc must be faulty or something.