My boyfriend's laptop shut down during a power surge last night and now he can't boot it. It turns on and goes to a screen asking him if he wants to boot in normal mode, safe mode, safe mode w/ networking etc. He's tried booting in every one of them and it starts, but then goes right back to that screen and won't go any further. Any suggestions?

He (or you) can either try to diag the problem based on where it stops in safe mode. Usually things scroll and when it stops you get an idea of what fails. Other than that you might have to use the repair feature by booting to XP. One way is to use sfc.exe another is to use the xp repair that basically puts the OS back to the way the CD installed it. Your data is there but applications would need to get reloaded. Another way is to make a live xp cd such as barts or ubcd4win and try to repair it that way. Playing to the angels Les Paul (1915-2009)

can you tell me exactly how to do all that so I can tell him? it'll start to run windows, but then it goes right back to the prompt screen without saying what failed. How do I go to sfc.exe? .