Can't get past Safe Mode options screen

My sister has a HP ZE5500 laptop (5 years old) that recently cannot go past
the safe mode options screen when the power is turned on.

She was in Internet Explorer (the only app open) walked away from the laptop
for 10 minutes, came back and had a black screen with a blinking cursor.

She could not power the laptop down or use ctrl-alt-delete. She used the
reset button.

She has not been able to get to her desktop since. I tried to help and
selected f8 to bring up the safe mode options and tried each of them. After
selecting an option, the screen freezed and I can no longer use the keyboard.

I tried the safe mode option, safe mode from command prompt, from last safe
configuration and tried selecting the normal window option (I can't remember
the menu verbatim).

Does anyone have any suggestions? The hard drive status light blinks when
the menu option is first selected and then stops. The battery is charged.

Any ideas on how to get past this point? There were no warning messages
about bad sectors or anything leading up to this.

Any ideas is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi Lori,

Three options:
- Boot from XP cd and select boot from recovery console
then execute chkdsk /r /f
if not working you have two mo
-Use a recovery program like RDCommander or Hiren's Boot to try to repair
the system.
-Boot again from XP, enter, f8 to accept the EULA and then press R to make a
repair installation of the system, you will get a fresh windows
installation.

Hope this works for you!
Luis.


"Lori" wrote in message
...
My sister has a HP ZE5500 laptop (5 years old) that recently cannot go
past
the safe mode options screen when the power is turned on.

She was in Internet Explorer (the only app open) walked away from the
laptop
for 10 minutes, came back and had a black screen with a blinking cursor.

She could not power the laptop down or use ctrl-alt-delete. She used the
reset button.

She has not been able to get to her desktop since. I tried to help and
selected f8 to bring up the safe mode options and tried each of them.
After
selecting an option, the screen freezed and I can no longer use the
keyboard.

I tried the safe mode option, safe mode from command prompt, from last
safe
configuration and tried selecting the normal window option (I can't
remember
the menu verbatim).

Does anyone have any suggestions? The hard drive status light blinks when
the menu option is first selected and then stops. The battery is
charged.

Any ideas on how to get past this point? There were no warning messages
about bad sectors or anything leading up to this.

Any ideas is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!