Help, me baffled

Hi all,

Your help here will be much appreciated. My friend left me her laptop to check out some probs she has been having. The issue is with XP in that when it loads the only thing on the sceen is a white pointer, black background, no icons, no start menu.

I have been trying to acess safe mode but this also only displays a blank screen, no icons etc. Safe mode with command prompt is the same.

I have an old Windows XP cd but i cannot also boot from this CD. There was a message on screen at one stage 'No operating system found'.

Is there something i can download to boot from so that i can even access the command prompt.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

You should be able to boot from the XP CD - you probably just need to change the boot order in BIOS/Setup so that CD-ROM is top of the boot priority list . Setup is often accessed by hitting Del or F2 during POST but watch for on-screen prompts in case it's different .