I'm actually trying to fix a friends laptop. He has a Toshiba running xp with sp2. When starting the computer the windows did not start succesfully crap comes up and gives 5 choices to boot up; 3 safe mode, last known good config, and start windows normally. But when I select any of these the comp restarts itself.

Now I was able to boot from the windows cd. I thougth I could try to run some recovery stuff but I don't really know how to do that. When I tried to install windows it tells me that there is no previous version of windows on the HD.

Anyone have any ideas on wtf is going on?

Hi

First of all test your HDD with its Diagnostic tool found here by make: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

Run the through scan and do so twice just to make sure.

Download and run Sensors View
Report the temperatures, voltages and fan speeds it shows when ran.

*Download Memtest86, burn the downloaded ISO image file onto a CD using software such as Nero and the reboot your system with the CD inside.
*When it restarts, on the first black screen (POST) press F8 (some may be F4) and it'll give you a boot from menu.
*Choose boot from CD-ROM as the first bootable drive and hit enter.
*Then Memtest should run and display its screen. Give it 3 or so hours and let it run. See if any and how many errors show up.

Do the same again using Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool

If it gives errors, take out all but one RAM stick and run the test again in 2 different slots to check if its a slot that maybe faulty. Test each RAM stick separately then.

well I actually got it to run a repair on windows. I waiting for the xp key from my buddy. It seems to me like it is just installing a fresh version of windows instead of a repair like I thought it was but my friend doesn't really care he just wants it to work.

Well the issue is resolved. I had to use the toshiba system recovery cd which wiped out the hd but it is working now. Thanks for the help