got home to find out off the kids that my laptop had suddenly stopped working.

Came up with screen with 4 options to restart.Would not allow me to do this.

In the end tried to reinstall the master disc.

Got approx 50% through installation then the power would turn off.

Tried 4 times then give up.

Do you receive any error messages? Are you trying to perform a repair installation of Windows or have you wiped the hard drive and started with a clean slate?

Not to accuse your kids of any wrongdoing, but do they actually know what happened and what sort of error occurred?