Laptop crashed on windows install - not booting up now

[Gaffer]

I was reinstalling windows xp for a friend on a toshiba laptop, it crashed 3/4 of the way through the installation and now it wont even read the disc to try another install.

Any ideas how I can start again..? it wont let me into the boot screen, just brings up the black starting windows and then just hangs, the cd drive isnt even spinning up.

HELP PLEASE....

Cheers
Claire

[miniman]

Can you get into the BIOS? Try pressing F2 / Del / F8 / F10 / F12 (depends on the PC). If you can get into the BIOS, find the "boot sequence" settings and make sure the CD drive is set to top priority.

If it still won't boot from CD, you will need to make a boot disk. Win XP boot disk is actually 6 disks which you can download from microsoft.com

Or, you could boot off a DOS6 boot disk and use FDISK to wipe out the hard drive in the laptop, then try booting from CD again.

[_dobbo_]

I've had lots of fun in the past with Toshiba laptops, don't know why they seem to act up more when i work on them.

Last time I had the same problem as you describe, crashed during an install, couldn't even power the thing on.

Pulling the battery out/in fixed it for me.