powering down on startup

[amorphous]

i have an old laptop that i am trying to make use of but when i start it up it gets to where it says it needs to check the drive then seems to shut down! tried a few times but nothing seems to change it

its a pentium P4 running XP

 

[mattross]

Have you tried Safe Mode? Or failing that an XP repair if you have the XP CD.