My computer was working fine since i got it. My brother was playing a game on the computer one day and i restarted the computer by holding the power button. It restarted but afterwards didn't want to boot into xp anymore. It would go to the menu where it asks you if you want to boot into safe mode or start normally and all the other options. Well none of them work. If you click start normally it would get to the xp loading screen with the blue bar then it would load for 4 seconds and just restart my pc again and the process repeats. I couldn't find my recovery cd so i got one from someone else, an xp home cd. I tried the recovery console and i get 2 options 1. H:\miniNt and 2. H:\i386. I tried fixboot on both of the above and nothing but don't want to mess something up and erase data by trying fixmbr. Could anyone please assist me ?

"i restarted the computer by holding the power button" It might help if you explained why it was necessary to restart this way. You can't use just any old Recovery CD...you have to use the one for your machine.

You might be able to reset your machine by unplugging all power to it for a bit and then trying to boot it into safemode and choosing last good known configuration! In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

Well i had to restart it that way because he spilt a drink around the keyboard, so i was cleaning it and i remember seeing the whole screen white for some unknown reason. He was playing the game so i don't know how it got to that white screen. So i held the power button so the computer wouldn't be on while i was cleaning the keyboard. After all was done he tried starting the computer and all the above happened.