my buddy's laptop isn't booting PROPERLY for some reason. it goes through the motherboard's splash screen, then gets to the vista load screen, and freezes. it acts LIKE it's done loading vista, the screen will go black, but it just sits there, not computing. when he booted under safe mode, it gets to the file crcdisk.sys before it freezes. he wonders if vista is fubar, but i'm not entirely sure, as i'm not there to help him out. i do think it's a software issue, but i'd figured i'd get some help from you guys. any ideas?It may be a driver, or hard drive issue.
Open Event Viewer, and look here:

i assume this requires him to get into windows, correct? if that is the case, he can't do it, because it freezes as windows is loading.I see. I didn't read carefully enough. Sorry.
Does he have Vista DVD?unfortunately no. the oem disk didn't come with his laptop when he bought itCreate Vista Recovery Disc.

Option 1:
http://www.c4consulting.com.au/soluctions/vista/VISTA%20SOLUCTIONS.htm

Option 2:
Download Vista Recovery Disc iso image: http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/
Burn it to CD, or DVD: http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/G/Burning+ISO+Images+to+a+CD+or+DVD

Boot from created disk.
At first screen click on Repair your computer:

This will bring you to a new screen where the repair process will look for all Windows Vista installations on your computer. When done you will be presented with the System Recovery Options dialog box:

After this, it will present you with a list of options including startup repair, system restore and command prompt:

Try System Restore, first.
If that doesn't work, try Startup Repair.awesome. i'll do that for him before he goes and spends $xxx to get someone to fix it. i'll post back with results. cheers!I'll be waiting WELL it worked. he did a system restore to last FRIDAY, and now everything seems to be working all dandy. thanks a bunch broni! Super