vista startup problem

[bronners]

my sons acer laptop running vista refused to start in normal mode.i managed to get it to start in safe mode and did a system restore selecting the recommended point by windows,however after restart the desktop just hung and i could`nt even shut down properly.after turning the laptop back on i got a message saying restore had failed and once again the desktop froze.after another safe mode start i restored to another point further back which seems to have cured the problem,although the start up now seems slower.does anyone know why this happened in the first place,and also why the first restore never worked.thanks in advance.

[ACtheTROLL]

how old is son?

how long is a piece of string .... no way to explain without having been there

if 10-18 assume the worst...
if 10-16 ... you'd better start thinking of ways to monitor what he's doing.

oh and scan for viruses

[bronners]

scanned for viruses and it seems ok now,the only other thing is when i tried f2 to get into safe mode last night an alarm went off and a screen came up asking me to choose which o/s to use.well as there is only vista on it i thought that a bit odd.could you shed some light on that please AC.by the way my boys 7 but he does know what he`s doing + he`s only allowed on it when we are around to help if he gets stuck.

[ACtheTROLL]

ahhh 7
still human - the horns won't have started growing yet?

I'm a bit puzzled it's normally f8 for safe mode

http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2007/12/22/rejectin g-vista-starter-eula.html

it looks as if f2 is the system recovery option (a near miss!)

but to complicate matters - for some reason it looks like some machines insist on f2 then f8 (this seems to be an option that varies (dangerous) - none of the machines I work with do this ... so I'm a bit vague.

I'm going to pass on this ... I'm not exactly sure ... and if system recovery is involved you want someone who knows
.... anyone???

[bronners]

ok thanks for looking AC but it is f2 on his for set up and safe mode is in there its n acer aspire by the way.i forgot too,when it first would`nt start it said it was doing a startup repair but that failed too,strange uh.anyway thanks rfor trying to help.