I am having a problem that I am not familiar with.
I am unable to get Windows XP to start.
Everytime I turn on my laptop, things look perfectly normal.
Gradually as the icons down in the lower right hand corner next to the time begin to appear one by one, nothing seems unusual. HOWEVER, about halfway through that process, the screen goes black, there is a slight pause and then it begins to start all over again from the beginning. This never ends. I left it on for about fifteen minutes to see what would happen and it just keeps trying to start over and over.

I do get a screen that comes on occasionally suggesting that a program has been installed incorrectly. However it stays on for about two seconds at most and I am unable to read all of it. The problem is that I have not installed anything at all on this computer recently. I also sometimes get a message that comes on that tells me.."a serious problem has been corrected" but the problem continues.

On the advice of friends, I tried safe mode as well as the
F8 key but neither one had any effect on this problem.

I have a DELL laptop..it does not play cds or dvds at all.
I have Spyware Detector installed and that has been there for almost a year.

I would greatly appreciate any advice anyone has on this.
You can post it here..or you can contact me at my email address:

[emailprotected]

THANK you very much.

BOB N.

email addy removed to prevent SPAMIf you can get into Safe Mode GO to Control Panel/Advanced/Startup and Recovery and uncheck auto re-start on errors...
Shut down.
You will now get a BSOD when this happens instead of the restarts...write down the entire error message and post it here and we'll take a look.Quote from: patio on November 24, 2008, 06:11:56 AM

If you can get into Safe Mode go to Control Panel/Advanced/Startup and Recovery and uncheck auto re-start on errors...
Shut down.
You will now get a BSOD when this happens instead of the restarts...write down the entire error message and post it here and we'll take a look.

Sorry i missed one...Control Panel/System/Advanced/Startup and Recovery...

In the Advanced window Startup and Recovery is at the bottom...open that and you will see the option.