Strange emachine problem

[CaseMizu]

Hello! hopefully i am posting this in the right section (total novice) and i'll try to explain this as best as i can since im typing on my PSP. My Emachines computer just died off yesterday and whenever i turn it on, it loads up a menu saying Window's failed to load, A recent Hardware or software might of done this. Then it proceeds to give me the generic options of lauch in safe mode,with Command prompt, network. The other two are start with last good config and start window normally. this always shows!

 

[CaseMizu]

sorry for double post! PSP is lame when need ed to type. But anyhow when i choose ether one of the last two they load up windows (where it shows the loading bar) then it restarts back to the menu. when i use my emachines disk it hangs at please wait. safe mode(s) will load up some huge list of directories to files. then it goes back to the menu screen =/ my pc is T2958 and its turning 4 years in august, i never opened it or changed its parts. Any tips?

 

[BILL_S]

I used to use PSP for Internet, then I got a PS3 with USB keyboard! Try that instead, and add a USB mouse for good measure. Since you and I both own eMachines, we don't need to talk about how cheap they are or the terrible PSUs because as far as I have gotten, it's NEVER been an issue, nor has the OEM Windows ME that I value to this day... it's frankly better then Win 98 and 95!
Anyway, I would start to assume your HDD is or could be dying. I was told typical lifespan is 5 years, but that's not very accurate in my book. Mine is still humming! And it was 30GB back in 2000! Use Last known config first and if that fails use Safe Mode and get to System in the control panel, in fact, put a shortcut to it on your desktop! I often do.

There you can access specs and Device Manager so you can remove any offending hardware drivers, ot reinstall them. Check for errors here in Device Manager.

I guess my head was in Win9x land, sounds like you have XP installed, I fixed an error one time but can't recall how exactly. A friend's eMachine, in fact, had a seemingly flubbed copy of XP Home and he had lost the password so I signed in as guest. I think with his case....being it was a long time ago!... I used my own copy of XP Home to install any missing files, or have his drive search my XP copy to try and fix the problem. XP had a number of built in checksums and recoveries that should allow you to get to your data again. It's a little over my head with NTFS as I've spent the most time working with Win98 and Scandisk to do recovery.
I have a damaged HDD right now and it won't boot so I've decided to hook it up with a good HDD (on one IDE cable and try and get it from My Computer in Windows... if at all, then it's off to the garbage and starting over with a blank new drive