Black Screen with Cursor and New Installation

Hi,

I wonder if any can help. My girlfriend has had Vista 32-bit SP2 on her HP Pavilion DV6000 for many years and a couple of weeks ago it crashed after an AVG Update or HP Sound Driver Update. From then on a black screen with cursor would come up after the Windows Logo Flash.

Over the course of the last weeks I have tried many solutions and done lots of research with nothing solving the problem. I have tried memory scans, chkdsk, automatic repair, trying to find a system restore point and reconfiguring the bootloader to name just a few.

In the end I have obtained a Vista CD and resorted to an installing a fresh version on the hardrive which has retained the Windows.old folder with all the files within it. This version now works and I using the laptop to type this.

My question is whether it is possible to copy the files from the windows.old folder to the new installation of windows so as to maintain the old structure i.e. desktop icons, browsers with bookmarks etc? Also, is it possible to reverse the installation process so as to maybe fix the initial problem?

Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks.