Laptop won’t start up after installing updates

I recently installed Micrososft’s latest updates on my Acer 4315 series laptop running on Vista Home Basic. Now I am getting a start up error that says Microsoft cannot figure out the problem. I’ve tried going through safe mode to the last successful boot and it still keeps giving me the same error box.

Of course I don’t have a system restore or recovery disk. (Shame on me!) Is my only option to buy a recovery disc?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.