Dell Inspiron 1525 hard crashes when graphics drivers load?

[deci]

My dad has this old Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with a purchase date of 2009 that won't load any operating system if it's not loaded with a "Safe mode" or "Safe graphics" mode. As far as I can tell, it's an issue with graphics drivers loading on start. When the laptop is loaded in a normal mode, it begins the boot process, then it flashes a strange pattern of white, then the laptop hard crashes as if there were a power failure.
Does anyone know what exactly the issue could be and a possible fix for it?

Laptop specs:
Dell Inspiron 1525
Intel Pentium T2330 (2 cores, 1.6GHz)
4GB DDR2-666

[steelo]

10 minutes ago, Commander Neon said:

My dad has this old Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with a purchase date of 2009 that won't load any operating system if it's not loaded with a "Safe mode" or "Safe graphics" mode. As far as I can tell, it's an issue with graphics drivers loading on start. When the laptop is loaded in a normal mode, it begins the boot process, then it flashes a strange pattern of white, then the laptop hard crashes as if there were a power failure.
Does anyone know what exactly the issue could be and a possible fix for it?

Laptop specs:
Dell Inspiron 1525
Intel Pentium T2330 (2 cores, 1.6GHz)
4GB DDR2-666

What OS is he running? Honestly, it may be easier to reinstall the OS.

[deci]

Just now, steelo said:

What OS is he running? Honestly, it may be easier to reinstall the OS.

Windows Vista. However, there's important files on there, and I tried booting a Linux distro only to get the same result- a "safe graphics" boot mode was required.

[steelo]

12 minutes ago, Commander Neon said:

Windows Vista. However, there's important files on there, and I tried booting a Linux distro only to get the same result- a "safe graphics" boot mode was required.

Worse comes to worse, you could remove the hdd, connect it to another pc and pull the important files that way. Try to find the latest gpu drivers (on another pc, vista is not safe to connect to the internet) then boot into safe mode and install via a usb storage device.

[deci]

8 minutes ago, steelo said:

Worse comes to worse, you could remove the hdd, connect it to another pc and pull the important files that way

I forgot that was a thing i could do. I do have a USB to SATA adapter and i could get the files for my dad that way. Thanks

I do, however, want to know what the issue with the hard crash could be.