Total Crash...Help

[stumped too]

I downloaded IE7. It worked great for the rest of the night, then I woke up to a crashed competer. It was on the "we apologize for the inconvenience but your computer is totaly fried" screen with no ability to move the prompt or anything. I tried the F8 to boot in safe mode but when I arrow keyed up to SAFE MODE and clicked ENTER it whent to a black screen and stayed that way. So I tried "last working..." "restart normally" and the same thing happened. I can't get it to restart with command prompt.

The only thing I can think is that about a 3 months ago a friend wiped my system and reloaded his copy of Windows XP pro because I don't have any original disks for the computer, it came with XP Home.

any ideas?

 

[almcneil]

You may have been nailed by the Windows valaidation program but it doens't usually disable your comp, just gives you annoying warnings.

My typical approach would be to do an XP repair installation but I'm concerned you're using a copy of XP Pro with a vloum license key. You may fail the activation step and be locked out. In that case, you'll be forced to get a copy of XP Home. Ask your friend for the copy of XP Pro and what Product (license) Key he used.

 

[stumped too]

I am virtually certain it is a volume version and that is what I thought too (as if I have any experties in the matter).

What do I do? Just put the XP disk in and turn it on? Will it automatically run from the disk?