Vista - vista startup error on a dell inspiron 1420

i have a dell inspiron 1420. i've had it for about 1.5 years. i can honestly say i don't treat it very well: i'm a highschool student that procrastinates a lot so every late night i have is a late night for my laptop too.

today i tried turning on my laptop, however, it got me to a black screen with grey text telling me: windows recovery error. it's saying stuff like windows failed to start, and it's asking whether i should launch startup repair or start windows normally. when i launch startup repair, it tells me the problem cannot be solved and just restarts my computer. when i try starting normally, it goes to the black loading screen and then the screen just goes black and stays black. sometimes i get the occasional blue screen of death when i try the startup repair. it says:

stop: c0000218 {registry file failure}
the registry cannot load the hive (file):
\systemroot\system32\config\DEFAULT
or its log or alternate.
it is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

i tried rebooting it with my dell windows vista cd, and it lets me install vista except if i do i will lose all my files which i do not want to do. if someone could please help me that would be great!! thanks!!

Hello felawful,
Have you tried starting in safe mode ?, (press F8 at bootup), if you can, then try a system restore, also on the Vista disk before it goes to install there should be a repair option, take a look and post your results, good luck.

when i try safe mode it just gives me a black screen and stays frozen there or gives me a blue screen of death with the same text. do you know if i boot from the vista cd and reinstall vista, will my files still be there?

If you reinstall you could loose all your files. Before the install option on the disk there should be a repair option that will repair all the startup files, take a look at the disk and see if it's there, but be careful not to re-install Vista.

If you are not sure, take a look here.

Repair Install For Vista

when i repair vista it just says it was unable to fix the problem and the computer will now reboot.

Are you using the disk for the repair ?,

i'm using the dell vista operating disc

i'm running the startup repair again right now...

You should be seeing these screens when doing a startup repair with the disk.
System Recovery Options

yes i'm there. i tried the startup repair bu it just says its unable to solve the problem. i tried system restore but it said that the system detected corruption in the OS (C and the files had to be fixed.. i pressed the button to fix but then when i tried system restore again it said i had no restore points to go back to!