Inspiron 1545 Problems Booting Windows Vista

A friend recently asked me to help fix a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop that would no longer boot into Windows Vista. There were a few files that the friend did not want lost either. What follows are just some of the notes that I took while surfing the web that helped me in my efforts to restore this laptop to working condition. 

 

How to recover your Windows Installation from the recovery partition when you have no windows installation currently on your drive, or when you get the Bootmgr is missing, or you've nuked your drive using the Ubuntu LiveCD.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/vista/vistarecovery.shtml

 I actually did use the Ubuntu LiveCD to find and recover any personal files as my first order of business. Using the LiveCD I was able to expand my fledgling Linux skills a bit more and explore the contents of the drive. I found the files and saved them off to a USB stick for later. 

I used all the drive diagnostic tools, available from BIOS to Windows repair, to check out the drive because a particular error was coming up and several Google searches were indicating that the actual hard drive might be flaking out.

Error code 1000-0142...unit 4....Drive Self Test Failed..status byte 75.Is this the indication of a bad HDD?
That means the file system is corrupt and there may be bad sectors on the hard drive.

Try this:
1. Boot the computer with the Windows disc.
2. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen > press R to start the Recovery Console.
3. When prompted type "1". (if you have a multi-boot computer, select the installation you want to repair.)
4. When prompted > enter the Administrator password. If there is no password, just press ENTER.
5. Now you should be in the recovery console.
6. Type chkdsk c: /p /r > press .
7. When the disk check is done: Type Exit > press .
8. Take the Windows disc out and reboot.

If that doesn't work the hard drive has to be replaced.

 (I think I found the above on http://www.techsupportforum.com/)

Ultimately, I reached the end of my time to troubleshoot and attempt fixes and just set it to restore from the factory partition. I know, lame, but that's all the time I had to devote to this issue.