I think my laptop is done/help booting Vista

[mistercharlie]

So I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 that is about 7 years old. It is (was) running Vista. When I went to turn it on this morning I quickly see the "Dell" screen and am then prompted to sart windows in Safe Mode or to start it regularly. But no matter which one I choose it goes to a black screen with a mouse pointer on it, and then nothing. I tried starting it in safe mode with command prompt and the same thing happens.

Oddly I can start it up using the media direct option and view the pictures/videos/music that are stored in the public files, but cannot start windows itself.

What can I do? Or is it time to scrap this heap and scrounge up some money to get myself a new laptop?

[Superfreakie]

A common problem with those Inspirons is that they eventually succumb to overheating problems which tend to fry the cpu, gpu or other components. When mine went last year, nearly 7 years old, guy at Dell told me forget trying to repair it, it's time to move on.

[Hicks]

Yeah seven years is pretty good for a laptop, probably time to just pull any data you don't have backed up and get a new one.   

[DoW]

I'd make sure it is trying to boot from the hard drive and not the CDRom.
Other than that, get all the data off while you still can,