I restarted the computer so the anti-virus would take effect; I got to the sign in page, signed in, and after about 5 seconds, I got a blue screen and could do nothing but turn my computer off. This happened over and over. I tried booting in safe mode, etc, but it kepting happening. So I tried booting with the last settings that worked, and all of the sudden I can't even get to the login page; after the blue DELL sign shows up and it attempts to load, I get an error called lsass.exe. My only option is to hit 'OK' for the error, and when I do, it restarts my computer.
I spent a few hours on technical support with Dell and we went through many things, trying to reinstall windows XP. After many failed reinstalls, they transferred me to an 'advanced technician.' Every time I would attempt to reinstall XP, it would say something like 'Unable to detect drives' after the 'successful' reinstallation when the computer tried to load Windows. So we ran a diagnostic check and Drive 0 passed, drives 1-3 and 5 were not there, and drive 4 could not be tested (it was my cd/dvd rom drive I think).
We went through the setup menu (f2) and the f12 menu with no luck on either. Tomorrow the technician is going to try to walk me through dismantling my computer to connect the drives that are not being detected. I'm hoping there's a similar way and that you kind folks could help me out.
PS: I read through the lsass.exe thread pinned at the top but the situation seemed different than mine; I was never asked for a password or anything, it just simply restarts the computer and won't let me get past it.