Win Xp Home, stops on boot, Help

My sis in law has a compaq laptop that boots until it gets to the blue win xp screen, where the user name pops up, then stops. It use to pop up with her user name and log on automatically, If anyone has any ideas for me to try I'd appreciate it.
My sis in law said she was trying to get her printer to work and changed some LAN setting, for some reason, and then it wouldn't reboot. It won't even boot up in safe mode. I can get the restore to work with the instal cd, but not sure what to do next, Help.

Thanks,
Rob

 

If you can't boot into normal mode, safe mode, and you can't do a system restore from the install cd, you just may be stuck doing a clean install.

Sorry.

 

When it crashes during the boot sequence, it should give an error code which look something like a series of random numbers and letters. If you post that error code, we would know a LOT more (or not). Please tell me the error code and we can go from there.

 

I wish there was an error code, but nothing comes up, just the screen that says Windows Xp. I'm just not sure what to do when I use restore.
Thanks,
Rob

 

Your problem could be hardware, software, or the registry. Not being able to get into the OS either in safe mode or normal, makes it hard to figure out.

Put you system restore CD in the drive, make sure the BIOS is set to boot from CD. When the install askes if you want to Repair (Restore) select that option. Your other option is to do a full system install, which will format the drive and install a new copy of windows on the HD, wiping out any data on the drive.

At least with Repair the data will still be there.