I've taken my friends laptop home (MSI S262) with me and first off i'll tell you what works:
- Boots memtest (cd) and passes 19 tests, no errors
- boots ubuntu and knoppix live cds
- can still read the hdd using knoppix +ntfs
- boots past BIOS (obviously)

Now, what doesn't work:
- windows xp hdd boot (loads past BIOS then hangs)
- windows xp home/pro retail boot cds (loads CD, enters into "Checking hardware etc" then blanks out)

With a desktop, i would normaly pull it apart and try and boot barebones, however since its a laptop its not an option.. also tried taking out the batterypack and holding the power button a bit as advised by a friend.

So.. comments, thoughts on how to proceed?

How old is the laptop. How long have you had the hard drive.
Sounds as if it is a bad hard drive, or a defective (scratched, marred) install disc.

If its the disk, you can ring microsoft and give them your key, they will then send you a new cd.

Regards Jase

the winxp cd is no problem, i've got 3 different cds here (1 full home OEM, 2 upgrade Pro retail) and they work on other pcs.

laptop itself is probably only a month or two old (i didn't ask her, but it looks still new)..

i was thinking hdd too.. but the thing is that i can read it using knoppix (all three partitions) so that got me kinda confused..

currently backing up her data to an external in the meanwhile..

edit: i believe i might have gotten somewhere.
safe mode kinda works, but only if i boot using the option "safe mode with command prompt". Other options or the last known good config have no effect. i've run chkdsk only in read only mode and it did pick up something, however since it needs to reboot to fix things i can't, due to not being able to load past BIOS for windows..

edit 2: never mind. fdisk'd the crap out of the hdd and reinstalled. Fixed.