This is a gateway laptop with vista home edition. This was booting up and showing the gateway and the option to boot or bios setting and then goes to a black screen with the white arrow . I THOUGHT maybe the hard drive was bad and run the bootable hard drive test. Now  with the cd out of  the system in goes to black screen that read A disk read error occurred. Press ctral+al+del to restart and it goes to the gateway and goes right back to the error message. The vista was preinstalled so I do not have the operating system on the cd . But since I am getting that error message not sure if it will read it even if I have one . I used the system yesterday and it was in working order . Today when I turn on it would let me once in awhile boot to safemode but it would just go in to the black screen. I can get into the bios not sure what is going on .Not sure if it is a total loss or if there is something that can save this laptop. I don't want to loose everything that I have on it but if it has to be  to get this in working condition it  would be better then nothing. I know I should have back up shame on me. newbie with just a small bit of knowledge still learning and help would be greatly appreciated. this is a 64 bit alsoIf you have a friend available with Vista OEM disc, you can perform a repair INSTALLATION and maybe fix this if its not a damaged hard drive. Without a Windows Vista disc or system restore set there is not MUCH that can be done to fix it. If you want access to your data you could always download and burn to a CD or DVD a live distro of Linux such as Ubuntu or Knoppix. And if you knew which files needed to be replaced you could use Linux to fix Windows Vista. You can also use Linux to repair hard drive corruption issues, but you will still need to replace files that were damaged or destroyed by the corruption.

Easiest method is Repair Installation with Windows Vista OEM Disc. You place the Disc into the DVD drive and boot from it, it detects a prior install of Windows and you select from the menu tree to perform a Repair Installation. When the repair installation is over you authenticate your Windows Vista key with Microsoft and perform security updates etc if needed.I remember I do have a Ubuntu cd . it has 4 option
try Ubuntu without any changes to your computer
unstall Ubuntu
chek cd for defects
test memory
boot from first hard drive
or press 4 to select alternative start-up and installation modes the option is
normal
safe graphics mode
use driver update cd
oem install ( for manufactures)
which one should I use I also have a desk top gateway that I have a windows vista operating system disc but it is 32- bit and the lap top is       64 will have issue trying to install that. Since it shows disc read error occurred will it even read that disc. This disc is to re-install operating system. I will use this one of you think it will work.I will only use the Ubuntu for last resort .You cannot use an OEM CD (i.e. Gateway HP Acer etc ) to run a repair install unfortunately.
do you know if a restore boot disk will restore.  you use to be able to go a website and download free a bootable disk. do you know if this is still available or if it would work. I saw on a site abc15.com where a news person said that you could put your hard drive in the freezer for 20 to hour in a bag one of the silver ones and 50 percent of the time the hard drive will come back to life. sometime just enough to get your data off . Anyone try this and found that it worked. Thank you for your help also appreciated.I have heard of this technique, but havent used it yet, however drives fail for all sorts of different reasons and chilling a hard drive may work for a hard drive which warms up and then operates outide of normal operating tolerances to fail.

All drives I have had, failures have been caused by different causes, such as:

-  The head striking the platter and scratching ( such as when my office chair decided to raise itself a few seconds after getting out of it and the arm of the chair slammed the underside of the desk sending a shock wave to the hard drive and causing the clunk of death )

- The drive motor needle bearings after 8 years of use 24/7/365 in a NT4 file server went from the whining noize of the Fast RPM SCSI drives of the time, to what started at about 6 years into its life a cyclic whine harmonic to a loud groan and not able to spin to the correct speed to be read.

- Had an early Maxtor 500GB SATA drive that would run fast and then make a Screetch/PING noise and then go out to lunch for about 30 seconds and then start working again. Sent this one back to warranty replacement.

- A customer brought in a system that the hard drive smoked the controller board in it. They plugged both the SATA power as WELL as the P-connector into an early SATA drive that had optional power input, but of which had a warning in small print never to plug in both that they didnt see.do you think the hard drive is bad for the error message disk error occurred press crtl alt and delete and it goes right back into this screen error message , if I put in a  new hard  drive in the operating system was preinstalled with on this laptop does gateway do you know if they  have a web site that allows you to download with the certificate key or does Microsoft  have a download that I can get. Also ebay has some recovery dvd do they work to recover the systems as they state.I would to recove the data but not thru a recovery company. I will just start over. I do have oem gateway from a desktop if put in a new hard can I install that one.I took the hard drive and put it on a working computer. this show the hard drive in properties is working properly. In my computer when I right click it shows no data . Does mean all the data is gone. I was going to run a disk error check but it says I have to format to use that drive.If you get the system to boot up once again, try and create a recovery CD.

The Gateway site tells how to do this for Vista.

What is Gateway System Recovery?found out my pressing alt f10 when the gateway logo comes up you have the gateway recovery management option to how would you like to restore and it shaded out and not able to access . no option to recover data. It appears the operating system is gone. since this was preinstalled and no cd came with it how to I reinstall vista Like I stated below it shows the harddrive in a working computer but when I right click in my computer it just shows the drive e with no information.I was going to run check disk for errors but it wants me to format before I can use. when I put the hard drive back in the laptop when it boots up the error message disk error   press crtl alt delete to restart. Do I need to take this to the working computer and fomat and restall vista or I have a ubunta and it will load it gives a option to view or install and I choose view just to see what it was all  about .I don't know why it has the error message disk error as I can load from the cd. Just a beginner .THank as always the great information that you all provide for us that don.t know much.