Win XP Pro (won't boot)

I've been trying to fix computers for about 10yrs. Some work some not but I enjoy doing it. My friend has a older Dell L500r, It won't boot to Windows. I power it up & it shows the Dell screen then the Windows screen then it just makes a clicking sound & starts all over again! Any idea what might be the problem. I don't have a Win XP disk, I guess I'm just lost without it huh??????????

 

Hi dozer,
This might be a sign of an HD failure. Clicking sounds aren't good.

Is this a laptop computer or a desktop?

 

It also could be a bad cable, faulty/failing psu, data corruption (run chkdsk if possible).

Can you get into safe mode?

 

It's a desktop. I can't get to safemode either. I can get into dos mode,but it dosen't reconize c:. every command I enter it says, bad command or invalid drive.

 

try to put a different HD in the computer and see if she boots. good luck

 

When ye say dos mode, do you mean recovery console?

Or do ye mean, that this isn't xp, but windows 98/me?

Or do you mean, safe mode with command prompt?

Or are ye using a bootable floppy msdos disk (which won't work, unless the main drive was fat32)?

 

I'm using a bootable floppy. I didn't know it wouldn't work on ntfs. Oh well, back to the drawing board! It could be Fat32, I don't really know?

 

I did put in a different HD, It didn't work.

 

The hard drive that you tried... Are you sure that it is bootable with the OS on it? Did you check the ribbon cable connection to the MOBO?

Also, I would pull the RAM and re-seat it.

 

No I'm not sure, what do you mean by that? Yes I even changed the ribbon.

 

I tried to use the windows setup disks & it got to disk #6 & got this- stop: c0000221 unknown hard error \systemroot\system32\ntdll.dll Does anybody know what this means?