Vista Black Screen w/ Cursor

Recently, my brother in law tried to open up a pdf (which turned into a virus). After that happened, he was notified he was missing some drivers. I told him to system restore, and after doing that it just started up with the black screen. This now happens on every boot, including safe mode. I cannot access anything via CTRL ALT Delete, or the shift buttons. The only thing I hear after hitting Shift 5 times is a little sound like a *blip* so it may be coming up I just can't see it (sticky keys)

I have the Vista CDs and have tried every diagnostic option on there, the startup diagnostic tells me there are no problems. I have tried to reinstall the video drivers from command line but I just get an error. I have also tried the Drivers and Utilities CD to run some kind of test and fix. All the tests pass fine.

I think there is a problem with the video driver but I am not sure. When I boot in safe mode it stops at crcdisk.sys. I don't know if this is the normal end point for safe mode but that's the last sys file loaded before the black screen. I do not have a way to run an install without deleting everything and would prefer not to do that.

I cannot get to the device manager or control panel from where I am. I have tried using devcon.exe but its not that easy to use.

So just to recap, no safe mode, no regular startup, no last good config, no start diagnostic, video driver won't install via cmd (others do).

Any ideas...I am almost out of them. I am going to try and install SP2 for the heck of it but I doubt that would affect the boot up.

Let see if this will get you to a point where we can use some of the regular repairs.
Try this

Take out the battery, (eliminate this step if desktop)
Remove main supply,
Hold power button down for 30 secs,
Put only power supply in, do not put battery in
Turn laptop on
Put the battery in.

Just out of curiosity, what will holding the power button down do if there is no battery or battery supply? I am at work now and will not be able to try that until later.

If power is still present, resetting will hopefully solve part of the problem.
Holding down the start button removes residual power, that may be present.

I've powered up and powered down many times with the Laptop. I apologize for not giving the model. Its a Dell Laptop Studio Inspiron 1525. I've been working on it for hours. I just didn't know if pulling out the battery and putting it back in did anything special.

I have helped several with similar problems, cannot boot at all. After reset, about 20% of the time, they were able to boot and get the computer working.
Its a long shot, but you have tried quite a few procedures. Getting rather close to a reinstall.

I will give it a try but I think its a problem with booting the video driver but I'm willing to try anything at this point