My flatmate's laptop has suddenly stopped working properly. When she turns it on it looks like it's booting up normally, then get a flash of a blue screen, then the screen saying it hasn't started properly, choose between safe mode and starting normally etc.

Whichever you choose, it then just starts loading, and goes in a circle, with the same blue screen and safe/normal mode screen. If she could get it in safe mode then she could try a system restore, but I'm a little stumped as to what options there are when she can't even get past this stage? :huh:

Any ideas what might be causing this? She's not changed anything recently to cause any problems, no new hard or software, it's not used for anything too taxing. Googling I did see that lots of Toshiba Satellites have problems with restarting, but not found anything about it doing it constantly, never getting anwhere

If you have the XP cd you need to boot from it and select the recovery console, then when it eventually loads up select 1 for drive c (usually) if it has an administrator password enter it, if not just press enter (if it asks for a password) At the c:\ prompt (usually) type chkdsk /r and press return. It will take bloody ages but will either fix it or it wont. If it does not you might need to do a full reinstall.

I think it could be a memory issue (Ram or HDD) If its RAM then your going to have to replace/take out the faulty piece(s) If its HDD then just reinstall windows. I had the same issue a while back and it turned out to be RAM. Hope you fix it!

It might also be worth checking that the fans are operating correctly, although I don't really think it could be overheating that fast.

Apparently the hard drive is corrupt, unfortunately, so looks like she needs a new computer, and a new back up method. I.e - have one! Luckily lost nothing vital, but music and photos, but still a pain in the neck.

So while I'm here, where's good for cheap but decent PCs? All she needs it for is internet, word-processing, (and the Sims :hihi:) - She found a desktop for £299 at PC World, but I'm not sure where/what else to recommend to her, it's been a while since I bought one, and mine's from a local company back home, and I'm fairly ignorant when it comes to the specs/processors etc. :huh:

Why not format the drive? it might be fine? At worst a new hard drive is £30-£50. Seems a big excessive chucking it away.

I'm not sure, her dad took it to a colleague as it was originally from his work, so I presume there is a reason he's not suggested this - if it was salvageable, I think he would have it fixed