Vista - Vista stuck installing updates. Help needed 'urgrently'? Please?

Grrr.

I purchased my laptop through Dell last week, and it arrived yesterday. It is a Dell XPS M1530 and OS Windows Vista Home Premium.

Anyway, it worked absolutely fine and all the bad press I had heard about Vista seemed to be completely false - I loved it.

When it came to shutting my computer down, it wouldn't shut down first of all. Infact, it wouldn't do anything - but I could move the cursor and when I hovered over icons it was responding. I then just left it alone for about 5 minutes.

I tried to shut it down again after that,and there was nothing for a few minutes... again. Eventually,the screen flashed, went abit crazy (but not very crazy, kind of a normal crazy for computers,as in it flashed and looked like it had been woken up) and it started to shut down.

Probably teething issues.

And then here is the problem. It proceeded to install the updates on shutdown. I left it to do that, and I noticed it said

'Installing update 14 out of 15..'

and it had said that for quite a while. Of course,I left it. For about 2 hours. No change. It wasn't frozen, as the dots after '15..' were rolling away and animated. I couldn't see my curser anywhere.

Eventually I had to shut it down by just pressing the power button (my mother was getting abit crazy about the electricity bill). When I eventually powered up again (when mother was asleep) it went straight to the same 'Installing update 14 out of 15..'screen. Animated dots and all. It didn't even seem to boot up or anything, it just brought that screen up straight away.

No keys worked, I didn't have a cursor. After another 15 minutes of the evil update screen, I turned it off again. I powered on and off again once more, same thing.

That was last night, and I havn't turned it on again this morning. I think I would be fooling myself if I said it would be fine now. And even if it gets through it's 'Update 14' obsession I may have corrupted the OS.

If I havn't corrupted the OS and it still says 'Installing update 14 out of 15..' with it's pretty dots, what can I do? Is there anything I can do?

I'm pretty upset as it's a great laptop and I was beginning to love my first Vista..

Thanks in advance. I really hope someone helps.

P.S I've tried ringing dell and they just keep me on hold for about half an hour before I give up. I'd prefer watching dots than listen to that stupid music and a automated voice practically telling me that whatever is wrong with my computer is all my fault and I shouldn't be bothering them. HA!

Did you get a restore disc with it?If you did pop in your disc and it should go back to the original software that came with it.You might lose some files but it is better than not working at all.

Just try it again I've had a few that has done that too. No biggie