Is the blue screen really the blue screen of death ?

My sons laptop (BIG HP pavillion) has been playing up and just would not start up in any fashion, after some researching i have managed to get switched on in safe mode by tapping the F8 button on power up.

Machine sat there with safe mode written in each corner for over 30 minutes so i gave up and power off, on power up i just have a blue screen with the cursor and thats it.

Any clue lads/lasses ?

Try tapping f10 or f11 on startup and access the recovery partition. It will wipe anything on there and put you back to a fresh install position but it will be better than what you have at the moment unless you made a recovery disk when the computer was new.

[Edited on 23/5/11 by Peteff]

Cheers pete i do have a set of recovery discs i made when new, i will have another go with the safe mode start and then keep everything crossed and go for the F11 trick.

Just had a look and it could be f10 or f11.

Oh hang on a minute all of a sudden the HP recovery manager has popped up on screen, you see the world isnt ending after all

It will restore to factory settings so i guess thats windows 7 gone and back to vista ho hum.

Well its taken me most of the evening and its back to vista, but i have the reciept and ID number for the windows 7 upgrade so i should be ok to get it back.