Thanks AnnMarie for your quick reply. I have followed your suggestions and this is the result:
System restore claims there are no restore points. This i find questionable since I know for a fact that I've been making them, at least once a week by hand. But who am I to argue with Vista
I tried running the command prompt from the Repair Menu, but that doesn't recognize the SC command you suggested.
Then rebooted back into the Windows Boot Menu, selected safe mode with command prompt, but that just takes me back to the same screen with the error message.
Maybe I didn't quite catch on at something in your instructions..? Was my first Command Prompt action correct (from Vista disc), but do I need to cd into a certain directory to get the SC command working?
Also, after I've done the SC config bit, do I reboot the computer without the disc I presume..?
I'd normally experiment myself, but in this case I have an additional issue.. the fan on my Asus 8800GT TOP slows down to a crawl about a minute after I reboot the system and my GPU temperature climbs up to well over 80 degrees Celcius. I'm not sure what temperatures it can take, but I don't wanna find out the hard and expensive way.
Can you say rock and a hard place..?
Is there anything else you can suggest before I'm forced to bring the beast in for "repair"?
Cheers