My sister has a gateway laptop with windows xp. She was on it the other night and her zone alarm popped up with a message and her computer locked up. Ever since then, she has been unable to boot up. When we turn the computer on, it takes us to a screen that says windows was shut down improperly and select the mode you want to start it in. No matter what option you select, (safe mode, last known good configuration), it takes you to a blue screen that flashes by very quickly, then it starts all over again. After several attemps, we can make out on the blue screen the following: A problem has been detected and your computer will be shut down to prevent damage
unmountable_boot (there's a little more after but I can't read it)
There's a lot more but I only get about 5 seconds to read the screen. I have found some articles that talk about it but they all say I need to run check disk from the recovery console. I can't get a recovery console. I have the operating system cd that came with her computer. In the notes I found they tell me to hit R and it will take me to a command prompt. I can't get to a command prompt. Last resort I will reinstall the operating system but I wanted to try every option before I started. Any ideas or suggestions?