[mymyst]

i am unable to get my wife's computer to load windows xp. it has xp home edition and i belive service pack 1. i purchased it for her at walmart and did not receive an xp disk. it is a toshiba satellite laptop m/n A55-S106. I do have the product key and s/n of the laptop. I want to be able to restore her computer without having to format the hd with the recovery disk that came with it.

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First thing is to try booting into safe mode by hitting the F8 key while the computer is booting up. If you can get into safe mode you may need to go into the computer management and shut off auto restart.

How to turn off Auto Reboot in XP

Right click on My Computer
Select Properties
Select the Advanced Tab->Startup & Recovery section
Select the Settings button
uncheck "Automatically restart" Apply".

This will give you a blue screen with the error message rather than rebooting the computer.

Heres the best blue screen error website.

http://www.aumha.org/win5/kbestop.php

Find the error and post it here so we can figure out what to do. You might be able to do a repair install on the laptop with a OEM or retail XP SP1 cd if you can find somewhere you can borrow one.

If you do not get a blue screen and the laptop still reboots you will probably need to use the recovery CD. This is also true if you cannot get into safe mode. If the recovery CD won't install windows it is probably the laptop hard drive that has gone bad.

SRX660

[SRX660]

First thing is to try booting into safe mode by hitting the F8 key while the computer is booting up. If you can get into safe mode you may need to go into the computer management and shut off auto restart.

How to turn off Auto Reboot in XP

Right click on My Computer
Select Properties
Select the Advanced Tab->Startup & Recovery section
Select the Settings button
uncheck "Automatically restart" Apply".

This will give you a blue screen with the error message rather than rebooting the computer.

Heres the best blue screen error website.

http://www.aumha.org/win5/kbestop.php

Find the error and post it here so we can figure out what to do. You might be able to do a repair install on the laptop with a OEM or retail XP SP1 cd if you can find somewhere you can borrow one.

If you do not get a blue screen and the laptop still reboots you will probably need to use the recovery CD. This is also true if you cannot get into safe mode. If the recovery CD won't install windows it is probably the laptop hard drive that has gone bad.

SRX660

[mymyst]

i did get the computer to disable the repeat boot. the blue screen error that comes up is "unmountable boot option". i still can't get it to boot up in safe mode, and the only disk i have only lets me format the existing partition. if i use that option, my wife will lose all her important papers from school and all her pictures. so what else can i try.

[mymyst]

sorry, but the error is "unmountable boot volume". it does not boot up in safe mode, and the disk i have does not bring up a repair console at all. is there something else i can try?

[SRX660]

This is probably because your boot.ini file is messed up. You wil need to find a Windows Xp home CD to use

Boot to a XP cd and when you see the Welcome to setup press the letter R
You will get a dos prompt
Then type "chkdsk /p" without the quotes and hit enter
When that is done type "fixboot" and hit enter
"Y" and enter at the prompt
Then type "exit" and hit enter
The system will now reboot into Windows

If for some reason that don't work for you, you can boot to the recovery console like above and
Type "chkdsk /r" then enter
When done type "exit" and hit enter.
This will take longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.

SRX660

[mymyst]

thanks for all your help. i had to get a hard drive external enclosure and download everything i wanted to keep onto another computer, then reinstall the hard drive back into her laptop and used the recovery disk. everything worked out, so thanks for your help.