Gateway Laptop Won't Load Vista/ NOT hard drive problem

[elmolee]

Hello,

I have a Gateway T-6815, just under a year old. Vista no longer loads at all when booted up, there's the Gateway screen briefly and then a black screen and nothing loads. When I boot from the OS CD-ROM, I have run the startup repair numerous times, and according to the diagnostics the only problem is "system volume on disk is corrupt." I can't run system restore because I never created a backup point.

I have searched for this problem but it is usually thought to be a hard drive error, which I know is NOT the problem. I have taken mine out and attached it via an adaptor to a friends laptop...all my data is fine and readable. Also this is a new hard drive from when the original died 3 or 4 months ago.

My only idea is to save the important stuff on my hard drive and reinstall Vista...which I would rather not do if possible. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this?

Thank you!