HP Pavillion dv6500 freezes

My daughter's laptop - HP Pavillion dv6500 (Vista) froze yesterday.
She asked me to take a look at it, but I have not been able to get very far on my own.

I cannot always reboot (just get a black screen)
The lights always go on and can always hear the fan (& maybe harddrive?)

I've tried the hard reset, but that doesnt always produce a full boot - tho a few times I have been able to boot (once in safe mode)

Tried to run a virus scan, but early on, it froze.
It was also really slow.

Before I take it somewhere - can anyone here give me some ideas to try first?

Thanks!

I do not think she has a recovery disk because when I asked she gave me a blank look.

 

When starting up the PC, look at the screen and see if there is a "restore" option (it will usually be at the bottom of the first screen with the HP logo, something like "Press F5 for restore"). Warning: Look at the prompts carefully. Some restore options may erase any files on the drive. If this is the case, STOP, reboot into Safe Mode and backup any files to a flash drive/external HDD before doing the restore.

If the restore is successful, I would do the following just to be safe:

* Install and run a full scan with Malware Bytes.

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=5756

* Do a long hard drive test using a free program such as Seagate's SeaTools. Chkdsk won't always catch HDD issues.

* If the drive shows any errors, I'd order a DVD copy of the restore from HP and purchase a new HDD ASAP. Once a drive starts getting errors it goes downhill quickly.

Hope these tips help.