Vista Home Premium Not Booting

Hi - I have an Acer Laptop running Vista HP 32 which around 5 years old which has been slowing down considerably over the past year or so. For some time I have not been able to boot into safe mode enable network discovery, Windows Firewall and I am now in a position where it will not boot at all with an error reported in the boot configuration. I have tried start up repair and system restore without success. I think the OS beame corrupted a while back and I'm now wondering if the drive has finally given up the ghost! I'd like to rescue some data from the laptop if possible and would also like a clean install. I've reached the point where I either try to wipe it or get it looked at but would like to know if there are any other things I can try first. Would appreciate some advice.

Many thanks

 

You never finished this malware thread from last year which you had the same problems
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=278629&page=2