remmora

The laptop will turn on and let you get into the bios or if you you just let it do its own thing a screen comes up that it had a problem due to a hardware change or power inturuption and ask's how I want to start normally or in safe mode ect. But nomatter what I choose the windows startup sceen comes up with the moving bar and the shuts down and restarts

Terrister

1st you will need to boot from your Windows CD into the recovery console.
Here are the instructions. http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

When you get to the c:\ prompt you need to type chkdsk /r and enter.
This will take a long time on a large hard drive.
After this finishes, type fixboot and enter. This one is quick.

Now type exit and enter and your computer will reboot. It should boot into Windows now.

Let us know how it goes.

laboye

Yep, recovery console is the way to go here, If that doesnt work, run a system repair from the XP CD. To do so:

Start up off of the XP CD as if you were to format and start fresh.

Hit "Enter" on the welcome screen
Agree to the license agreement by hitting "F8"
Setup will scan for existing windows installations and give you a list.
Select your Windows XP installation and press "R" to repair the installation.

Doing this will not alter any of your programs or user preferences/documents. It will touch Windows and ONLY windows. This will reinstall windows fresh without altering the rest of the volume. Setup will proceed like normal, detecting hardware and rebuilding the registry (windows entries only). If your are not running a corporate lisenced CD, I don't beleive you must re-activate windows when you perform a repair. If you do, and can't activate it, and your CD is legal and genuine, Microsoft will simply give you another key, if you give them a call.

Good Luck!