Vista won't boot up....help!!

All of a sudden today my 1520 with vista Home Preimum wouldn't shut down and now it won't boot up.

I guess something in Vista is corrupt. Dell diagnostics ran and everything passed - so not likely a hardware issue - pc powers up but vista won't start up - i get stuck either at black screen or the Vista status bar going left to right.

So I will have to re-image to factory defaults. But is there a way I can get my data off before I do so?

Is there a way to boot off the other partition or is there a Vista boot CD I can use just to start the pc up and then copy the data through the dos prompt?

 

Did Dell supply you a System Disc?

Insert it when computer starts, and tap a key to boot from the dvd. After a little while, click

Startup Repair - automatically fixes problems that are preventing Windows from starting.

 

it did that even without the DVD - froze and didn't get me anywhere. I tried inserting the DVD which the system came from and id made no difference - can't boot off it.

 

Try SystemRescueCd. I think it will allow you to browse to your files, and then copy them to another partition or burn them to a CD/DVD.

 

try vista recovery tool

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2007/12/21/how-to-repair-windows-vista-without-a-vista-dvd-disc/

it loads al the files from the dvd in a small cd pacakge

 

Thanks to all for the help. Vista managed to restore to a previous point and start up. Now to re-partition to avoid this problem in the future!