just format it... and then boot from the Vista CD it came with... or if you dont have the CD it actually came with, you can use a CD from another computer, as long as its the same version of vista, and as long as you use the CD-Key from the laptop's copy of vista to validate, im almost positive...
also, if its in good shape $1000 to me would be a perfectly reasonable price for a laptop like that... you might even get $1250 or more for it... depends haha... good luck

- RK