Windows XP XP hangs on start up - please help!

[drp]

My daughter's PC won't boot up since Sunday. I have tried F8 safe mode but it hangs at the "windows is starting up" screen. As there are 6660 pages of help threads to search through can anyone offer any ideas or direct me to a particular thread?
I,ve never had a problem with this PC before and can only suspect it was caused by her leaving a CD in the tray.
Thanks

 

[Anon_F]

What was the CD left in?

 

[drp]

It was Sims Unleashed

 

[nimd4]

It was Sims Unleashed

That really shouldn't be the problem xD Dunno why you're not able to boot in safe mode either, are you sure you're going through the menu correctly? Screenshot:

 

[mandana1978]

repair

I had this problem before,I fixed it by repairing windows.Boot with Windows Cd and repair windows

 

[drp]

Thanks for replies - yes I definitely selected safe mode. Also it won't boot from the windows cd, it only gets as far as the "welcome" or "windows is starting up screen". I heard from someone that there may be a file missing but which one and how do I find and repair it?

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

It won't boot from the CD?! Does you computer have a recovery partition or CD? That might be the only way...
I don't think it's the CD, I leave my Sims 2 Pets DVD in ALL the time, it tries to boot from it, then it realises it's a game, and just moves on to boot from the hard disk.

 

[drp]

In that case she must have done something else and hasn't told me!
No it doesn't have a recovery partition and as it won't boot from the CD I,m stuck. Perhaps I could load an old set of DOS discs and try working in DOS to find out what has happened in bootlog file?
Any more ideas?

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

If you can borrow/Buy and fit a new CD/DVD optival drive, try booting from that. If it still doesn't work then BIOS might be corrupted somehow, a critical component might be damaged or maybe the computer is overheated.