Infinite windows load screen rolling into black screen

[zbackofen]

I'm new to this forum, but i've heard good things about this site. Hopefully you guys can point me in the right direction.

I've had a refurbished dell xps 15-something (nov 2007) for a few years now and haven't seemed to have any issues on it. I use it to browse and occassionally play world of warcraft on it. I took it to my friend's house and when i returned home and tried to start it up it gave me the start up screen that said it was shut down incorrectly to scan the c drive for errors, you know typical screen. I tried to scan the drive but following the windows loading bar, it send me to a lit black screen. Typically it will sit on this screen forever with no cursor, nothing, but very rarely it will flash a blue screen of death VERY briefly and then restart. I tried going into safe mode, but if I get past the windows loading screen it will just sit on the black screen forever. I have tried all the modes in F8, F12, etc. I even tried reloading windows vista on it, but I can never get past that black screen after the loading bar no matter WHAT i do. I'm about to send it in somewhere because I'm running out of options. I've never been able to not restore a lap top via re-installing windows. If anyone has any suggests you'd really make my day because this is extremely frustrating

[AnnMarie]

Hi zbackofen. You could try the suggestions here (they apply to Vista too) but if they dont help, I'm afraid I have no other suggestions aside from taking it into a repair shop.