Toshiba P200 series laptop won't boot

Hi
This laptop was bought new with Vista and came with a Toshiba Product Recovery CD.
Recently, it began freezing after a few minutes and would only shut down by holding down the off switch. When booted back up all would be fine for a few minutes until same again etc.
I tried the Product Recovery CD and selected the repair option, but it fails to load properly. It will not boot in Safe mode or any other option.
It appears to be 'thinking' about it for ages with a Microsoft logo telling me something is about to happen, but nothing does.
I thought it may be a virus and decided to format the drive using an Autoclave floppy that I have used on my XP desktop before. I intended to load my XP OS instead as I don't have a Vista CD. Then I found I have no floppy drive so gave up on that (probably the wrong thing to do so just as well).
Advice would be very gratefully received...:confused

 

can you get back to the recovery options, and choose command prompt. when there, try the command sfc /scannow

 

Thanks for the reply.

If I try loading Safe with Command Prompt, it loads windows files to a file that says..Loaded:\Windows\system32\drivers\crcdisk.sys and then freezes.

Doesn't get as far as command prompt..

 

nope, not that way. Boot the recovery cd, and in the recovery options window, choose it there.

 

When I said I started in Safe Mode with command prompt, this was via booting it with the Recovery Disc and selecting that option.

I have just tried again by starting with Recovery Disc in drive.
Pressed F8 to open the disc contents.
Selected 'Repair the computer' option.
After several minutes a window emerges entitled 'System Recovery Option' and inside says 'Installed program cannot start. Click OK to turn off computer'.

Could it be a hardware problem?

 

Halo

Followed your instructions and the Ubuntu OS seems to load OK.

I take it that means I have lost Vista?
Perhaps it was a virus?

If I wanted to load my Windows XP OS (I have a disc), should I format the hard drive and start from scratch?

What would you recommend please?

 

If you have an XP cd (and a valid product key), you can reformat your drive through the XP setup process. This eliminates the need for using Autoclave, therefore you no longer need the foppy drive. If you have a recovery partition on the drive you may want to keep that intact, in the event that you ever wanted to go back to vista later on down the road. Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes you will run into issues with missing SATA drivers with newer computers and XP. If this is the case you can get blue screens (the bad kind... not the blue windows installation screen) during setup. If this happens, you'll need to integrate the drivers into your windows disc.

 

Problem solved

Tried the XP disc but it would not recognise my HDD.
I have replaced the HDD and the Vista Product Recovery Disc has reloaded the OS.

Thanks to all for helping me.