Computer only just alive ... please help.

[judder]

Hello. My wife's computer appears to be in serious difficulties. Yesterday it was fine. Today it will not boot up (into Windows XP). The only thing she did yesterday was to download iTunes.

When it is switched on, it gets to the screen that says Windows XP is loading and then restarts, taking me to a screen which asks if I want to boot up normally, in safe mode, etc.

I've tried to boot up in safe mode, but it will not. It gets as far as WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\agpCPQ.sys and then does nothing further (and it's been like that for the last 2 hours).

It's a Philips Freevents X65 and came with no system disks, and my wife neglected to create any. I've tried installing an older version of XP, but the computer won't even try!

If you can offer any help at all, I'd be extremely grateful.

 

[J.B]

Ahhh the freevents, if i remember are from the purple shirt brigade and supported by "The Tech Guys"

You may be able to get something off their site.

When you put an XP disc in, does it boot off the disc at all? Is it set to boot from CD drive in the BIOS. basicly if you can get into the pre installation environment you might be able to repair the damaged file.

A different solution (if you have the hardware available) if to take the laptop HDD out, and connect it to another machine, either by connecting directly or via a USB caddy and run all the usaul CHKDSK and Defrags on it.