Laptop won't boot past accounts screens.

[The Fish]

Evening all.

Acer laptop running Vista home 32 bit. Won't go past the user account screens. Nothing when it gets there. Totally frozen. Have to turn it off, will go to BIOS, can't see anything wrong there.

Now, here is the interesting bit. Classic case of 'I'll help you out mate' and I am out of my depth a bit. Laptop has vital data and a prog that is now defunct. No he hasn't backed up. [Yeah, I told him lol].

I could try recovery with the Vista rescue disc. But that gets it back to an OOB state. Could then try Active File Recovery I guess? Never used it before but other threads show me its the preferred bit of kit for that.

I suspect he got one of those nasties that act as an AV but in fact mess your O/S up big time. He did mention he had one a few weeks ago. Got someone at work who used StopZilla I understand.

Obvious an re install will minimise any chance of data recovery. Don't really want to take the drive out as I have never worked on laptop hardware before, just proper pcs lol. And then I'd need a caddy to mount it in mine I presume.

Ideas please anyone? I am a bit tired now, so hopefully tomorrow I'll perk up and see a way.

Could be major drama here and I offered to help! Oh well I'm in it for the learning, and the crate he has promised

And yep, I'll share the beer!

[The Fish]

Have used @actibe boot disk to save data. Result, accessed drive and burnt the files. Now however that freezes after load. Re install not an issue really now, but what could that be?

Had a couple of shut program issues before. Then when I loaded it next - freeze. Memory issues - could not reference then 'oooxxxx etc'. RAM issues? But @ Active loads into RAM so its doing that ok.

Ideas anyone? Have deleted the malware folders I could as well.

[The Fish]

Ran memory tests all night. One fail very quickly, well just froze, then laptop passed.

But will not load Vista recovery disk. Or Win 7 install disk. Gets to an early point and freezes in both cases. Have cleaned drive with Dban drive eraser, still get no joy on re install or fresh O/S. Drive is cleaned, on start up it now says 'no O/S.'

I think this must be hardware related now. Erased drive so any virus must surely be gone. As mentioned previously I only build desk tops, never worked with laptops hardware wise. Am I looking at RAM?