Problem with laptop

We have a gateway laptop with vista home premium in it. A while back my wife downloaded some windows updates, and then the computer went haywire. Now just before it gets to the welcome screen, we get a blue screen that talks about an error, but it goes away so fast, we can't catch what error. Sense this happens just before the welcome screen, i can't reformatt the hard drive, or restore or anything. This hard drive wasn't a few months old when this happened. My question, is there a download i can put on disk from another computer, and whipe the hard drive of that one completely clean OS and all? Or does someone know of another fix?

 

It is a Gateway model nx570x. I have tried booting every way it gives me a choice to, and always the same thing. An error screen in wich it moves away from that screen, and i don't get a chance to see. If i can just formatt the hard drive, i can take it from there... Thanks for responding