Solved Vista Won't boot

stops at 'Microsoft Corporation' screen. I think I got it to boot from a disk and to reload Vista from 1 partition, but the disk has been making the same sound over and over for the past 25 min now and i'm not sure if anything is happening. Since telling it to reload Vista the screen has been grey with a big cursor arrow (that I can move around), but no other notifications, etc.

Should I be concerned or just leave it running?

Any assistance is appreciated!

Have you actually erased the partition? If not please try safe mode and tell us the last listed file or if you get a blue screen tell us what it says. If you reformatted try using Ubuntu live. Homepage | Ubuntu

no response in Safe Mode or any other option - just goes back to the 'Microsoft Corporation' screen.

It didn't give me the option to delete the partition so I'm guessing I didn't.

Digging deeper...

in my haste, figuring nothing was happening since it had been 45 min, I shut the system down w/the power switch. Now, when I try to turn it on it gives me the 'Asus' splash screen, then a DOS message saying "BOOTMGR is missing, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restartn".

I'm able to get to the bios to choose where the computer boots from and get the same message regardless if its set on the HDD or the CD.

Help please.

Welcome
If this tutorial does not help, probably the best way is to use the restoration partition, after saving your stuff.
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/204930-bootmgr-missing.html

If you rapidly press f9 at boot, you will go back to factory settings, just like the day when you took it home. Your stuff, updates SPs will be lost. If you go this route let us know if you want to save your stuff.

Went the 'F9' route as I have all my files backed up. seemed to work, just going through and appying the 110 recommended updates!!

once I do that, do I need to reset the system to boot from the HDD or will things be back to normal once I restart?

Thanks for all your help!! Originally took it to a local guy to said it would cost over $300 to fix and probably needed a new hard drive.....so far, it's cost me a couple hours (granted i have NO IDEA what i'm doing) and $10 for the recovery CD.

Glad that we could help Scott.

As far as boot, when you are done try to boot. If you cannot then reset to boot from HD.
All that have helped wish you luck.

Moving right along. I restarted and everything seems cool so far. Curently installing all the updates.

Thanks to all!

Everyone experiences problems now and then. Why not download Macrium
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx after things are back the way you want. If you have problems again, you can just use the image and avoid all the reinstall hassles. That being said,
we are very glad that you got things sorted. I will mark this thread as solved.