XP Home SP2 hanging before boot screen

[scottmag]

Normally I have no problems fixing things like this, but in this situation I am quite stumped because there is no apparent way to troubleshoot. I'm using a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop that is hanging just after the dell logo comes up and it shows the grey loading bar. First thing I noticed is that this screen sticks around about three times as long as it did before and then after that I go to a black screen with a flashing indicator in the top left corner... I cannot get beyond that. I have tried to boot from disk and run the recovery console, but the boot process does not even get far enough to ask me to boot from disk. The only thing that I changed before this problem appeared was installing StyleXP... before that everything was working perfectly, so perhaps this installation modified something in my boot files that is causing the problem. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[CCT]

Safe Mode System Restore

 

[scottmag]

can't do that... I cannot get to the boot menu, it freezes right after the bios

 

[CCT]

If you can't force an F8 selection screen, can you insert the XP cd and boot into the repair/reinstall screen that way?

 

[scottmag]

I tried that... and it asked me to press any key to boot from cd, I left it for a bit and came back only to find it had still not loaded, so I restarted the computer again, now it will not even ask me for the cd

 

[CCT]

Power off, unplug the comp from the wall, press the comp power button.

Pull the CMOS battery or use the CMOS reset jumpers.

Leave like that for 1/2 hour.

Replace battery or change reset jumpers again.

Try a boot to BIOS.