black sceen
Hi theted
It depends on how happy you are with unscrewing cover plates on the bottom of the laptop. The best result is a RAM failure - if there are two strips of RAM installed, try one in each position and see what happens - it is unlikely that both would be faulty.
If there is only one strip fitted it is still worth buying a new one and if this does not solve the problem you can always sell it on.
Then it depends on how much vital data you have on the hard disk and do you have the Vista installation disk to do a clean install of Vista.
If all fails and you have to replace the hard drive - this is still not expensive but you still need a legal copy of Vista to install on the new hard drive.
All the servicing data is available from the manufacturer's website.
You may not feel confident to do any of the above but beware that a very large and important company wanted to replace a motherboard on a customer's laptop at a cost of £235 when the fault had been set up with loose strip of RAM - Daily Mail this week!
Cheers
peahouse05