Vista - Shutdown LOCK- stuck and can't access to unlock

I was trying to help a friend w/ his laptop w/ Vista (which I have not used before) and when we shut it down, I accidently hit the LOCK icon and closed the lid. When he tried to restart, the system appears to come back up, but then the screen goes black. I tried CTL-ALT-DEL, but nothing happened, still black screen, but there is lots of disk activity going on. We did a hard shutdown (holding power button down) and rebooted, getting an error screen and then booting in safe mode. Can do that, but don't know what to modifiy or try and change. He says he never created a password, has only one account on the computer which is an administrator account. When we reboot into std OS, same old thing, black screen after just a flash of the main screen. HELP????

Try and do a system restore in safe mode: System Restore - How to

Amplid

Boot into safe mode.
Go to control panel.
Choose power options.
Click on Require a password on wakeup.
You may need to click on a hyperlink to change the settins.
Select dont require a password.
Click on save settings.