Please help me with my Dell Inspiron 1545

I am new and have never even used a forum before so I hope someone can help me. I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop and over the past 48+ hours, I had somehow acquired a virus. I know nothing about the virus (name, damage it did, etc.). Initially, I wasn't able to get online but was able to view it in Safemode. Now, after contacting McAffee (to find out why it wasn't working to stop this virus to begin with) and Dell to see if they could help me (they wanted to charge me $129.99), I am not able to get on my computer at all. McAfee had sent me a link that would scan and clear out any virus. I had to download this and put it on a flash drive then hook that up to my Dell. It seemed to work but didn't even tell me if it found any problems or if it was even completed. Long story short, a friend suggested downloading Vista again and when I attemped to do this, it seemed to be going good until almost the end, where it said there was an error. Now the only screen I get is grey with an arrow (cursor). I can hit the F8, F11, F12 and get the messages that come up with those prompts but can't do any of the fuctions that I try to get them to do (safe mode, repair, etc). If someone could please help me get it running again, I'd really appreciate it. I am not completely computer illiterate but would need step by step instructions since I've never had this happen before. Thank you

 

Thanks and I'm sorry. Like I mentioned, I've never done this before and the first post was not supposed to be posted but I must have accidentally posted it. The post below is the one I listed. Are you able to assist me?