So, I have an HP laptop... I've had it 3 years, and I'm on hard drive #4...and now when I go to boot it up, I get a black screen with Ctrl+Alt+Delete...you press those and it restarts...does the same thing... Took it to Best Buy, they said the hard drive is fine (whatever dude...it's not running so SOMETHING'S messed up...I paid for a warranty and this is all you can tell me?! Anyways) Should I run the XP installation CD?? Or recovery console? Or what?? When I reinstall Windows, will I lose all my personal files (jpeg, mp3, yadda yadda)? Is there a way to retain those folders (by not reformatting, just repairing??) I would appreciate any and all feedback! Thanks!

Boot off of a clean Windows XP cd ( your bios has to be set to boot from cd rom 1st ) choose Install ( Not > To Repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R ) at the first prompt. It will then search for a previous copy of Windows. When it finds your copy, it will stop at the next prompt and ask if you want to do a repair. Hit R at this screen. If it does'nt mention a repair > DO NOT continue. It will then copy a lot of files and appear to be doing a reinstall ( But its not. All your programs and data are safe, all you will lose, are your Windows updates ) This will allow you to add accounts to the system that will be administrator accounts, it will also fix most problems in XP. You will have to reactivate after the repair, but dont worry it will reactivate cleanly. This may fix your problems.

IF you have a generic xp installation, this is what Johnw is suggesting.If you have a recovery disk system you can remove the hdd and install it as a slave in another machine and recover the data. How to do a system repair.--Boot from the xp cd and go past the recovery console to the install menu. Select repair the existing installation. You won't lose any data except the xp updates. Unless you have a slipstream sp1 Or SP2 cd you will have to d/l sp1 or sp2 and all subsequent updates. You MUST have at least SP1 installed and the updates for security reasons. Be sure the firewall and A/V is active before going online as you will be susceptible to sasser and msblaster.