Help! BSOD on startup (XPS m1210)

This morning my dad came to me, saying that his m1210 won't startup. I tried again myself, and sure enough, right after it's done with the little Vista scrolling bar thingy against the black background, it flashes the BSOD (just for a fraction of a second, no time to actually read what it displays), then goes to a black screen saying that Windows failed to start (duh). It gave me two options: use the startup repair tool or start Windows normally. So I tried the repair tool with no results. I tried Safe Mode, and I get the same BSOD flash. I tried using System Restore, and that doesn't work either. Now I'm attempting the memory diagnostics tool (just because I don't really know what else to do at the moment), and if that doesn't work, I'm going to install Vista again to see if that helps. It's possible to just reinstall Vista without wiping the partition, right?

This m1210 is less than a year old, purchased last August, about a week before Dell stopped selling it on their website. I still have the year-long warranty, but I'd rather try to fix this myself than send it back to Dell. It's a T7300 Core 2 Duo, running Home Premium.

Any advice or suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Also, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to reformat this thing. However, there ARE files in there that we would have to recover first. Just to let you know

 

First, why aren't backups made BEFORE THERE IS AN ISSUE.

Second, try reinstalling the graphics card drivers.

 

Most of it is backed up; just not the really recent stuff. In particular, there is a PowerPoint he absolutely needs for a presentation tomorrow.
And the drivers are on a Dell DVD... and doesn't that require me to boot into Windows first to reinstall them?

 

Nevermind, reinstalling Windows seemed to fix it. Odd. But thanks for the reply.