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I'm fixing this laptop for a friend, it's a big junker and it's not in warranty. She'd prefer to not lose everything, so here's my dilemma.

Somehow she's destroyed windows. Blue screens all day, even in safe mode. It's stuffed.

Now, I've got the toshy supplied backup CD's, and it will boot off it. I can hold F12 and select the CD to boot off it, and it gives me the standard 'push 1 for xp 2 for 2000', but these options just automatically format and reinstall.

What I'd like to do is use my regular XP cd to do a repair install of XP, such that I don't lose everything.

However, when I put my XP CD in, hold F12 and try to boot off CD, it just goes straight to the 'windows did not start up correctly' selection screen, and does NOT boot from the CD.

Is this a known issue? I really hate toshy. The bios on the machine is JUNK.

Thanks for the help!

Yep - been here before.
The last time I had this we needed to save the data on the drive so I removed it and connected the drive to a desktop using an adapter you should be able to get from any teccie store (careful about wiring it up pin1 to pin1 or you will kill the drive) - copy the data across to the PC; refit the drive and then use the Tosh system restore tools.
Hope this is useful!