6 months later when the ship arrived, I powered it up after the normal bios I was greeted with just a simple flashing under score "_" in the top left hand side.
I pulled out my BartPE cd and powered up the system. I was able to find that the C: drive (36gig) was still ok.
I ran a check disk and found some bad blocks, repaired and rebooted still no go
I went in and ran checkdisk again. Half way in the laptop runs out of power (DAM international converters)
Go back in to BartPE and the NTFS disk is now seen as a raw disk, I run TEST Disk and fix it and convert it back to NTFS.
I then do a DriveImage XML and backup the data as well as a simple copy of the "documents and settings" on to a backup drive.
I run check disk again and still bad block, I give in and do a format and then check disk and all bad blocks are gone :-)
I then reboot and insert a Windows XP CD and create a new partition and windows copies the files in and asks to reboot
On Reboot I am faced with the flashing Cursor again :-(
I put the XP cd back in and do it again (same problem)
I boot in to BartPE and run check disk all ok
I run test disk and check and rewrite the MBR
Reboot but still no luck :-(
Any ideas just trying to work out if its the Disk or the controller in the Laptop