I'm trying to fix a friend's Dell laptop. Who knows what the heck he did to it, but there were some errors on the hard drive, and eventually, I was able to get past the XP screen and onto the desktop. It seemed to be working fine. I cleaned up the files and ran disk defrag. However, when I tried to run scan disk, at the reboot, it got stuck on the Windows XP screen again. Now, I'm trying to boot in safe mode, and it's hung up on the DOS screen that lists the drivers info. Sheesh! It's worst than before I thought it was fixed! Anyone have any suggestions? By the say, the computer info is my info, not his. Since I can't get to the desktop, I can't get his info.

That would be "worse," not "worst," although it's pretty worst. :)

Try booting up with a XP CD and choose "R" at the menu to get to the recovery console. Then at the "C:\Windows" prompt, type in: Chkdsk /R And see if check disk can repair the files system Musky If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

I don't have the XP CD....but, I picked another option at the DOS screen (couldn't tell you now what it was) and it's running scan disk. Maybe it's going to be ok. I'll report back!

It completed the scan disk, but got stuck on the Win XP screen again. I'm thinking that the same thing will happen with the Win CD, won't it? Any other suggestions?

All set, I think. Besides errors on the hard drive, there was a trojan/worm, named java.byteverify!exploit a/k/a java/shinwow.av. I found out that if one goes to the Java icon on the Control Panel, there's a Cache tab, where one can clear the cache and it gets rid of the trojan. I didn't realize there WAS a Java cache. Once again, this board has solved a problem. Thank you!