My friend's laptop has suddenly started saying this weird message when she starts it up. It says, "Sorry for the inconvenience but Windows cannot start..." or something like that. It will not start in safe mode or anything, just gets to a certain place in the boot process and then loops back again or dies completely. She's called the place she bought it from and they just said, "Oh sounds like the boot files are corrupted.", and they told her to try pressing F5 and letting it check itself. She did this, but it hasn't helped, although it did identify a problem and now goes as far as showing the mouse pointer when she boots up, but then loops back again. She doesn't have a proper Windows XP disc, just one I lent her sister that is an older corporate edition of Win XP Pro, whereas her laptop came with a more modern edition of Win XP Home. I'm thinking she should be able to use the Repair facility on the Pro edition, or would this stuff up her Home edition, or indeed, not run at all?? Fortunately she and I have identical laptops bought from the same place with all the same programs, so I'm also wondering if there's a way for me to copy what she needs onto a disc, but then I don't know how we'd get the system to accept them, seeing as it's not running at all. She has a lot of files that she doesn't want to lose, so I'm hoping someone knows a way of restoring this without having to wipe it all. Please help!! We'd both be grateful (I'm praying this doesn't happen to my laptop). Many thanks in advance.
P.S. Just to add, it's Win XP Home with SP2.
P.S. Just to add, it's Win XP Home with SP2.
