Vista - Vista Hangs on startup

I am having issues on my Toshiba Satellite A200 Laptop that's running on Vista Home Premium (32bit) 1.73 Ghz and 2GB Ram. What's happening is that when I turn on computer on, and like always, goes there to booting process like this and all is well until that disappears and it hangs there on a black screen. It takes about a minute for my cursor to show (with the black screen still there), then another minute for the startup tune to go off and I don't get that blue welcome screen. A minute later again it tries to load explorer but that takes forever to load (around 2 minutes). Icons show up a few at a time, desktop background takes forever to show up. Once everything looks like it's loaded the system freezing every so often for instance opening my computer or Firefox takes forever and freezes. Eventually it does load and I can browse WebPages but freezes in between.

My system doesn't normally run that slow since I maintain it really well. I defrag every so often and use cleaners to get rid of registry errors. It usually takes about less than a minute to load my system from top to bottom.

I've tried something on my own like using Last Good Config a couple times and booting into safe mode. Safe mode boots up fast and does not take that much time so that eliminates hardware issues (at least I think). I've when through my startup to see if there are programs that shouldn't be starting up (through msconfig) and nothing seems to be out of place. Also now that I have this problem, I unplugged anything that's connected to a USB port but still no use.

However this might be what caused this issue. The pass 2 days I've kept my computer in sleep mode, because I need quick access. Also, I plugged in a USB flash drive and wanted to load a picture but the computer completely hung for a good 20minutes and after that I've decided to shut it off through the power button (I don’t think it was indexing as there wasn’t much to index). Now after that, the problem started to occur. I'm thinking that a system file is corrupted? Did some Google and people pretty much do what I did. There is something else I found that I didn’t try which does boot from VISTA cd and use bootrec.exe commands. Did anyone have the same problem before or know a way to fix this? Thanks in advanced.

Try booting to the Startup Repair screen and use System Restore to set the system back to a time before this started happening.

I've tried the Startup repair but with not luck. I ran a cleaner a few days ago so I don't have a restore point unfortunately.

you trying a system file checker? to do that yoou
start>search>right click and run as admin> sfc /scannow


Let us know the results

Ken

I'm assuming that you wanted me to search for cmd and run that command as admin. Anyways I did that but it seems to be stalling at 24% for a good 20mins now. My computer is freezing a lot now and is running slow. It looks as if the processor (and as well the blue LED indicator) is being used but it isn't. Shall I do this in safe mode?

After another 10mins of waiting it started moving again. However my system is still slow. Do you want a hijackthis log just in case? Thanks for helping.

Edit: The verification stopped at 86% and the following message came:
"Windows Resource Protection could not protect the requested operation." and the scan stopped.

Can any still give some advice? Thanks.

1) Run a full malwarebytes system scan along with sophos anti-rootkit.

2) What runs on startup? Use autoruns and the logon tab.

3) Try a clean boot. If that works, its something that loads at startup.

4) Update your gpu, sound, and graphics drivers, then flash your BIOS.

Use the diag kit in my sig if you don't know whats in your pc. Try the scans first.

I think it might be a RAM issue because even in safe mode, running a scan is slow (running malwarebytes scan. It sometimes is stuck scanning at a specific file and does not move forward. The CPU LED does not blink, just lights up. I might run a memtest scan later or just switch RAMs from my two laptops. I have 2GB of RAM installed (1GB each stick).

Lets look at this,

in line 2 of the op first post the registry cleaner was mentioned.

This would more than likely fry the registry on a bad day.

The op has done a few good diag test, the safe mode option worked.

This would seem to indicate drivers or the registry.

Did you back up the registry before using the cleaner?

You have access to the original drivers disk for your laptop?

Have you tried booting from the vista disk and doing a repair that way?

Have you tried booting from the Vista disk and doing a restore this way? There should be a restore point there just before using the cleaner or the last update.

Thanks for all your inputs. I've ran a memory test and both my RAM were fine. I manually tested each RAM as well. After starting a scan in safe mode, I've noticed that it slows down as well. I cannot finish any scan because at one point the computer will freeze. I've setup my laptop with 3 partitions (one with the OS and 2 for file storage) so I wouldn’t need to back things up when performing a format. I proceeded to formatting. I used the recovery disk that came with the laptop and I could not reinstall Vista. At one point I could hear my hard drive making sounds as if there were obstruction inside. Following that sound, a few minutes later I was given an error saying it couldn't be properly installed. Then I tried the whole processes again with the same error. I then pulled out my genuine OEM vista CD in hopes that it will install Vista. I formatted the partition and proceeded with installing windows. After the first stage, which was the Copying stage, it went directly to Expanding Files stage. At that point it was stuck at 0% and after about 10 minutes I was given an error as well (0x80070017). I tried this procedure again but with no avail.
I am deducing that my hard drive is broken. Before formatting I did do a scan of the hard drive for problems and found that that I had 4kb’s worth of a bad sectors. I will have to purchase an SATA to USB cable so that I can pull off my files in the other two partitions before it’s too late for those. If you do not think that my hard drive is broken, please tell me why and how I can fix it if possible. Hopefully the hard drive IS broken and not a popped capacitor in MOBO.