Vista Home premium x64 won't boot - Sony Vaio core 2 duo

Hello Everyone,

I just recently started having problems with my Sony Laptop not booting. It would stop loading on the MS windows green loading bars then hang up. I would have to turn the power off as alt ctrl delete would not reset. Upon restarting I would be given option to go into safe mode or boot normally. If I chose safe mode it would boot andbe fine if I performed a full shutdown. It would then work for a while but at times it would freeze if the computer would be left idle. I turned off power saver to prevent power down but on the last few forced shut downs I would not even get the option to go to safe mode.

When it would not boot in safe mode I had to do a complele system restore. I do not have the option to repair windows as vista came installed on my laptop (Sony Vaio VGN-FW170J). I would restore the whole system reinstall programs, then back up. It would be fine for a while but eventually freeze during a reboot. I tried disconnecting from the network, tried different browsers to see if anything specific was causing a problem . I reinstalled the OS up to SP2 and did not allow updates to see if a update caused the problem but the last crash happened anyway.

I've also run check disk but it doesn't find any problems or bad sectors. Could a hardware problem with the optical drive cause this type of issue? How can I tell?

Given I've restored the OS to the original factory settings 4 times in the last month I'm open to any suggestions.

As you probably can tell I am by no means a computer expert. Please keep any suggestions simple and assume I don't know what I'm doing.

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

Hi

This could be a problem with your RAM, or with your Motherboard (blown caps) but the Optical Drive cant cause any errors without a disc.

Did you install any new devices or programs right before this?

Josh