Me mams laptop has just gone blank , seems to start up ok but gets nothing else but a grey screen .
Anyone have any ideas what could of gone wrong , i live in Peterborough so can not go around to help her out .
Any ideas i can pass on to her would be welcome .
If not where is the best place she can buy a new one for a good price.
Thanks in advance

The shop at the bottom of Hart Lane is very cheap and they're good as well for repairs.

Before it starts to load windows do you get anything on screen? In particular I mean white letters on a black background?

when started laptop message comes up on screen, windows did not shut down properly this could be due to something to due to data , then a choice of different modes came up ,she choose windows vista then screen goes grey .

Try to get the laptop booted in safe mode, (press start and then press F8 until you get the safe mode option)

If it works in safe mode you can do some diagnostics like disc error check etc and will probably be ok).

will tell her to try that next ,she has just said its trying to reboot now and it might take a hour and keep restarting a few time so hopefully shes pressed the right button by total fluke .

The good news is that its very fixable, its only a windows problem so do what he said and we'll go from there.

someone is round now trying to help out says the f8 is doing nothing , thinks vista has been removed somehow. they have pressed f11 and seem to be getting somewhere dont ask me where lol but all hope has not gone yet

Most laptops have the Windows setup files on a hidden partition which you can access with F11 or F12.

Cheers for all the help she got a neighbour to re install vista and all is well again , dont know what happend but all is well again , thanks again for all that helped.