Vista not booting/Fixed-ish ignore thread

G'day,

Okay i have a problem with my computer, whenever i try too boot instead of that loading screen (with that 'loading' bar) it is just a blank screen. It will not change form this screen no matter how long it takes.

After a repair (vista cd couldn't find the problem) and trying to restore to a pervious restore point (which failed 2) it still wouldn't boot. just the black screen. So i opened the case and noticed that the HDD was kinda clicking. best i can describe it is when you turn off the computer it is the sound of teh read/write heads going into the safe position. But this would just keep on repeating, sit there and do nothing.

So then i tried to boot into safe mode, which surprise worked, after about 3 mins. just wondering if any of you guys had a soultion.

The HDD is getting fairly old (it is an old PATA) so if i can't fix it i'll gust make sure i store nothing on that drive, so i can install vista on another hdd.

thanks in advance
blake
Edit: also posted int teh HDD section.

Okay, thought sumthing like that was up, so i have installed vista on one of my newer drives (SATA, woot).