Have had problems over several weeks with my laptop not booting up. See: http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=65765

Worked fine for a week or so until last night. Booted up ok, but gadgets did not appear nor did Yahoo Messenger which starts automatically.
I couldn't click on any items on the desktop or the bar across the bottom of the screen. Shut down and was asked if I wanted to force shut down of applications which were still running. I said yes.

Laptop shut down and then when I restarted it came up with the Toshiba splash screen and the starting Windows and the Windows logo but then got the message that Windows failed to start and did I want to start normally or repair. I ran repair, but all aI get after Windows is loading files is the cursor on a black screen.

I've tried switching off and then I get the message when starting back up to say that WIndows did not start sucessfully and do I want to repair or start normally?

If I click on repair it comes up saying Windows is loading files and then I just get the cursor on a black screen. The hard disk light is not lit and nothing seems to happen (I used to get a new window appear).

I've tried pressing F8 at start up and I select the option to Repair Windows, but this just says starting Windows and then I get the cursor on the black screen as above. I've also tried changing the boot sequence so that it boots from CD/DVD first and inserting the recovery disks, but again nothing.

I'm now getting really fed up having reinstalled everything at least 4 times in the past couple of weeks.

Do I
a) buy a new copy of Windows 7 and ditch the recovery partition as it obviosuly doesn't seem to want to work;
b) throw the whole 18 month old laptop away and buy another make or
c) is there a possibility that it's the hard drive which is failing and should I buy a new hard drive and Windows 7 DVD?

Any help much appreciated as it's driving me mad!

Nigel