Windows xp not coming up, any advise?

You are on the right track. Something is wrong with the boot disk on the laptop.

Try reseating the disk first by removing and reinserting it. Small chance it's just a connection problem.

Next, a boot disk would help. Insert the boot disk into your CD-ROM or floppy drive (who still has floppy drives?) and hit F2 (setup) upon booting. Change the boot order so it'll go to CD first.

In terms of creating boot disks. You may already have one when you bought the laptop. In case you don't have it, below is the link to official Microsoft site on what to do.

This sounds like what happened to me last fall. I ended up first re-installing Windows--which allowed me to find my important data files. It was a real pain, but even with a boot disk I couldn't access anything.

Just re-installing Windows did not solve the issues which were caused by the new McAfee firewall last September.

All of my documents files were still on the root directory, but not in the new re-installed desktop "My Documents" so look for your data in the root directory if you re-install Windows.

In the end, in order to have my laptop back in good working condition, I had to reformat the drive and start from scratch. If you don't have data files that need to be recovered, then reformating would be your best option if your problem is a software related issue. By reformating, you get rid of the conflicts that caused the problem.

I wasted about 10 hours of my life doing all of this so be prepared to spend some serious time.

Start your computer, go to the boot menu where you are given the choices on how you want to boot, choose "last known good configuration".

If you still face the same problem, then your OS system files are corrupted and hence XP is not loading. In this case you will have to reinstall XP.

Even greater advantageous: Spend the ?25 on a USB exterior stress. reproduction your MS-word docs and photographs (and in spite of alternative documents you decide on). Then get carry of Linux for loose onto a CD/DVD. set up Linux on your laptop, blowing Microsoft's domicile windows away thoroughly. The virus would be long previous too. Then carry back all your documents onto your new Linux laptop device. Use LibreOffice for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. lots of track programmes, snap shots programmes, cyber web browsers, etc. If something, Linux suffers from TOO MANY loose utility programmes. Even on MS_Winduhs is till use LibreOffice instead of Microsoft's place of work suite. LibreOffice is basically greater advantageous.

if u have a recovery disk use that to start it up, if that doesn't work

restart your computer. while restarting press F8 couple of times and then click on continue in a safe mode and it should work, if that doesn't work conntact micrsoft they will help for sure :)

boot from windows installation disk and then run a repair installation

That is not a good sign. The software may be corrupt.

Do you still have a restore disc. If so try that maybe

just re install windows.