Windows 7: very bad crash

A few minutes ago my Windows 7 laptop crashed and now it won't startup without crashing. I was using a program to defrag my registry (bad idea). I've tried starting it in safemode but that crashes too. A system restore would probably work perfectly except there is a slight problem, after I select System Restore from the Windows Recovery options screen and select my restore point I can't go any further. I get to the screen where it asks me to select my hard drive but I can't select it. I click the check box but it never checks. Under the status tab it says, "You must enable System Protection on this drive". If this is what's causing the problem, is there any way I can enable system protection through the command prompt option? I don't know what else to do.
I cannot repair my Windows 7 using a repair disk because I do not have one. I downloaded Windows 7 from my Universities website for free. I have the original Windows Vista Home Premium install disk, though. If i were to use this, I would lose all of my files on my computer right? I really don't want to do that.
What can I do about my System Restore?

I read in another thread about typing net start vss and then typing rstrui.exe in the command prompt but the net start vss command failed because "The service is not responding to the control function." I'm willing to try anything at this point I guess.