Computer wont boot

[inspyron]

my friends computer (gateway 838gm) will not boot into windows. he told me he was playing wow and went afk, when he came back it had rebooted. during reboot it got stuck on the windows xp screen with the scrolling bar for a good while. ive tried booting in safe mode, using best know last configuration and all that nonsense. nothing has seemed to work so far. its unclear if someone else used the computer and did something to do it, it might help if we knew, but for now i told him to shut it off for about an hour or two cuz he leaves it on 24/7. any suggestions?

 

[JimShady23]

Anything

Really could be anything to tell you the truth....Can you get into safemode at all ? Id download a check disk utility from the hard drives manufacture in the computer and see if there are any errors on the drive..

Other than that its going to be hit and miss with checking each part...Start with the hard drive as I said and go from there. If you you know how to use a multimeter, check for voltage stability on the power supply....

 

[king21092]

Yea, JimShady is right, it could be an entire list of problems.
Start with hardware first, anything physical,
and then move to Software.