Hi mcvise and welcome to the WTT forums.
Sorry to hear about the problem with your laptop computer.
This can be serious (as I'm sure you will appreciate) it is possible to recover from this but sometimes it can be a time consuming procedure………
Here are the steps I recommend you consider taking:
1 Carry out a check of your laptop's hard drive to see if it is failing or has serious errors on it. For this you will need access to a servicable computer to burn a bootable CD that has a drive testing and repair utility…see here for what to do and how to do it:
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287
When you boot from the drive testing utility CD, firstly carry out the short test…if this passes then perform the long test. There is little point in trying to fix a Windows problem until you have checked the hard drive, if it's OK then you can go on to the next step.
2 If your drive is OK then the next step is to check that your back of everything that is important to you on your computer is up to date, accurate, comprehensive, reproducible and with at least one copy kept safe offsite on removable media. If you have let your back up get out of date even by a day or two then you will need to decide if you want to remedy this before doing anything else.(you can use a Linux live distro on a bootable CD to copy off important data files to removable media, like, for example an external USB hard drive or memory stick. Alternatively you could remove the hard drive from your laptop (remember to take all personal safety and ESD
precautions) place it in a USB caddy or "slave it" to another computer.
3 Once you are happy that all your important photos, music, videos, documents spreadsheets, emails, address book/contacts, favourites, usernames, passwords and everything else is safe (don't forget your product licence keys for your applications, the executables if downloaded, and the 25 character (5 groups of 5) alpha numeric product key for Windows itself, then you can move on to the next step.
4 Try and find your Microsoft XP installation disc..if no joy then borrow one from a chum (make sure its same version as yours XP Home or Professional and with the same level of Service Pack included on it (SP3 is the current one but at a pinch one with only Service Pack 2 might do) then have a look at the next step.
5 Next step take a look here for detailed instructions:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
if these are no good for you then a Repair install of Windows can be considered (and this should not affect your data files..(but do perform the back up check as an "insurance" before you start.
Report back on how you get on or if you need more detailed instructions on any parts of the above, and we can advise you further.
Regards
paws
