PC won't boot up to Windows Vista Ultimate

[alex39]

Hello, this is my first time on Vistheads and I apologize in advance if this has been answered already.

OK, here's hoping there are some experienced IT people on here today. Last night my laptop (Dell Inspirion 1720) crashed and now it won't boot up to windows VISTA Ultimate 32bit). I tried all the function keys, startup repair, recovery, everything that i could with the F keys and still nothing. Can't even start up in safe mode. So, I then retrieved the Vista DVD that came with my laptop and figured that would boot it up so I could make repairs. But still no luck.

The reason why the DVD won't work is because my computer has Vista with the Service Pack 1 upgrade, while the DVD does not have SP1. The computer, in essence, is newer than the original Vista DVD and won't recognize it for booting purposes.

So I guess my question is, how do I boot up my computer? I can't uninstall SP1, or even Vista because I can't get into Vista. I checked Bootdisk.com, and there are no vista bootdisks, I don't even think one can be created. So I'm thinking my options are:

1) Replace the hard drive (which is the cheapest option, but I'll lose everything;

2)Purchase Vista Ultimate 'upgrade' with SP 1 and see if this will work as a bootdisk; or

3)Purchase Vista Ultimate 'complete' with SP 1 and see if this will work as a bootdisk (since I'm not sure if the upgrade version would work as a boot disk).

Any opinions or suggestions? Thanks in advance.