Black SOD

Hi everyone. I have an HP A1710N just at 6 months old. Added 2 gigs for a total of 3 (1.5 each side). It's a slug. So much for the "this thing flies" posts I read before buying it.

For no earthly reason I booted a couple of days ago and got nothing but a black screen with cursor. Rebooted. Okay. Happened once again. Rebooted and checked Norton, Ad Aware and Windows Updates (all on auto). The only thing found was the latest SP for Vista which I downloaded. Restarted at prompt and another black screen. One thing I did note was that in Norton History there was a notation that execute.exe and launcher.exe had just made changes to Windows...was it Startup or Registry files? I can't remember but if it might be significant I can look it up again. I have no idea what those are (execute and launcher) but it sure did give me a sick feeling in my stomach when I saw it.

This morning I got HP on the horn and booted. Windows Startup Repair started. Tech was trying to blame the SP and wanted to disable it. I refused. The problem was already there so that did not cause it. This guy was in Argentina and I knew more about computers than he did. He asked my name so I asked his. I couldn't understand him so I asked him to spell it. He couldn't. It was Charlie. Uh-huh.

I want to get to the bottom of what could be causing the problem to prevent recurrence. Do any of you have any ideas as to whether it is more likely a Vista problem or and HP problem?

I have not installed any new anything lately, hard or soft. :wink:

Thanks for any ideas. As I'm sure you can see I'm not a tech but not totally clueless.

Thanks all.