"failed to apply vista.wim"

I was having some problems with my laptop (Advent 5313) - blue screen of death stuff- so I tried System Restore, but it didn't cure the problem, I tried to restore it again, but further back, and that didn't work at all; the system just hung. I went to the F8 'repair your computer' funtion and used the diagnostics there, but they didn't report any failures. I tried system restore from there but that just hung too (we're talking a day, here, by the way). So I went for destructive reinstall, but that didn't work either. I got an error message which I don't recall, but to theeffect that you'd have to use the recovery disk. I used the recovery disk destructive reinstall and about half way through the process I get the "failed to apply vista.wim" message. I tried again (several times) but it happens the same each time. Any ideas what this message means and, more importantly, how I can fix the problem?
Thanks
Alan

 

Plodr, thanks. It might be worth the £10 to find out as I don't know how to rule out a hardware problem in its present state.