Vista - Vista improperly shut down

I have a new Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Premium as OS. Last night the battery ran down while it was hibernating and shut windows down imporperly. Now it will not boot up. It first came up with the screen "Please Wait", but now the only thing on the screen is the "Windows Vista" logo information at the bottom.
I am a "newbie" at vista and do not have a clue. Can anyone give me an idea what is going on and how to correct it

Restart, hit F8 and choose last best config.


The I would do a diagnostic and disk check for corruption of the HDD, Windows, and for malware>

see post #3:
Is My PC Ok Or Not??

download/scan with Eset NOD32 (you can remove it afterwards)
Free Antivirus Download from ESET

or try these free online scanner/cleaners:
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/
http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/WelcomePage.asp
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner

ps- If you havent already you need to go to Windows update and keep going back until no more updates are available for your system. SP1 created a hibernate issue where it would cause the issue you are experiencing. This was later fixed in subsequent updates.

You can manually fix it here though if you like:
SP1 Hibernation Error: "System was shut down unexpectantly"

PSS- If the battery ran down while it was hibernating, then it wasnt in Hibernation mode.

Hibernation mode saves to disk then powers off. Only sleep, or Away mode stay powered up.