My son's computer has had windows xp home installed for quite a while. Recently it started refusing to boot. More precisely, I get past the POST page and get the Windows XP home loading up page, but then it just shuts down and reboots. Same thing when I used the last known good configuration option. I tried starting in safe mode, but all I get is one page of DOS like command lines and then it reboots.

I ran NAV and found nothing.

So I am thinking something got corrupt in XP home. I then booted from the XP home CD and tried to do a repair. It asked me to put the administrator's password, but I don't think there is one. So I just pressed enter and I got "C:\\windows". I listed the files, but couldn't find anything that looked like a repair .exe or utility.

I guess I could just reinstall XP home, but I don't want to lose any of the files and would like to avoid having to reinstall his various software programs (I doubt he has kept all the CD's). Plus, when I did try to reinstall, it said it couldn't find windows on my system (shouldn't it have been able to see the XP home I had installed? does that mean the XP home on my hard drive is corrupt?). It then asked me to put in my old windows 98/95 cd to confirm the upgrade, which of course I can't find anymore! I guess I could take out the hard drive and attach it as a slave to another computer, copy the files, etc. but that seems like a hassle.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated.

Duncan