Laptop not booting

WinXP Pro SP2 or SP3 - this laptop had a new 120gb IDE hard drive installed about 2 months ago and was working fine up until 2 or 3 days ago. Now it does not boot. No error, no reboot... it powers on to the IBM logo, the logo goes away, a blinking cursor appears in the top left corner for maybe 3 seconds, then the screen is just black and the PC is still powered on but there is no drive activity. Using F8 to boot to Last Known Good Configuration has the same result (but the F8 menu does come up like it should). Trying to boot into Safe Mode gets to the 5th or 6th file, it's C:\windows\system32\config\software (I think rolleyes but it might be ...\config\system). Then it just stops there, no error, no reboot, no drive activity, nothing. Just the 5 or 6 files listed on screen. CTRL + ALT + DEL does nothing and the only way to regain control is to hold down the power button. The BIOS settings are OK; I ran an in-depth extended RAM diagnostic and it was 100% OK; I'm running a HD test right now. I booted to a PECD and the data is visible on the hard drive so I don't think the drive is mechanically or physically damaged. My next step will be to run CHKDSK. Any other ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions? All input is appreciated!

Thanks!

 

:celebrate Problem solved!!!

The HD passed the diagnostic 100% as I thought it would. I booted to an XP Pro install CD, went to the recovery console, ran chkdsk c: /r, let it complete, typed exit, the PC rebooted and the XP desktop loaded up... chkdsk worked like a charm. I'm typing this from the laptop! All is well! Now to run some malware scans just to be sure it's all copacetic....
:cool

[dlb]

 

sounds to me that there were some windows boot files that were corrupted. i would have done the same thing you did. beyond that, a repair install would have been the next step.