Aaaaahhhhh, computer not starting up

[Phoenix]

My laptop, running Windows XP, will not start up correctly.
It starts ok initially,

Select F2 blah,blah,blah,

then goes to the normal black screen with the windows xp logo and then momentarily onto the screen where the wallpaper is displayed and the icons would be loaded (word,internet explorer, Nokia pc suite, etc) and then within a few seconds it starts to display the screen that you would normally seen when you are switching off (Dark blue at top & bottom, light blue in the middle with the windows xp logo displayed in the middle).

It also displays the same screen if started in safe mode.


wtf is going on.

Anyone offer any advice to a computer novice?

I suppose at worst I will have to system restore and lose everything that is on the p.c

Hope someone can help.....please

[_dobbo_]

Have you changed anything recently? Installed SP2 or a windows update fix?

How about trying "last known good configuration" when you press "F8" during startup. Does that work?

[Phoenix]

Tried the last known good configuration and it does exactly the same thing.

Was running o.k-ish before hand, seemed quite slow and had a couple of pop-up windows opening so I ran Ad-aware & Spybot.

I am presuming that it may be something I have deleted with one of the above programs

[_dobbo_]

You could try removing SP2 - it's possible from the recovery console. This might save you doing a full system restore.

Remove SP2 seems to be my current answer for everything, but it's worked for me twice now in the last two weeks on different PCs...

remove SP2

[Phoenix]

Don't have SP2.

Had to do a system restore now so I will spent the next few hours re-entering favorites & loading other software. Again.