[I_LIKE_PIE]

well this aint my problem but its a friend of mine. he shut his computer down as normal and apparently when he switched it back on it wouldnt load up properly and gets stuck at the desktop screen with no icons or options. i made the suggestion that it may be a corrupt windows. he said an error message came up depicting about an error in a system, unfortunatly he was very brief so im just guessing theres a problem with system 32. he cant load any files, run cds, nothing. im open to ideas

[peterh]

Boot off the Windows XP CD and do a repair install (select Enter to install Windows and then R to repair it).

[I_LIKE_PIE]

thats the prob. he cant boot anything coz it shuts his computer down. and its not a virus coz hes not internet enabled.

[tengkufairuzalif]

I have experience similar problem to yours and i too had the intention of re-formatting my comp but decided against it. I just went to click ctrl+alt+del and searched under Task Manager then under File, click New Task, a search option will appear, next find C:, then Start Menu, All Programs, System Tools, followed by System Restore and you restore your computer to an earlier date, preferably a month earlier. Hope this will help.

[danleff]

The problem with this thread is that there is not enough information to determine what the issue really is.

If the system consistently boots to the incomplete Windows screen, then Windows may be damaged, or there is a propblem with the hard drive, or a corrupt NTFS partition.

If trying to boot the Windows XP disk results in the system shutting down, then it may actually be a hardware problem, such as a bad hard drive, corrupt Windows partition, or even that the system is designed to shut down when it does not sense the proper fan speed. In this case, he may have a bad CPU fan. It could also be a power supply failure, or even memory failure.

What would be good to know is what exactly, or as closely as possible, what the error message is that he is getting.

Did he try to boot off the Windows XP disk? If so, was the bios set to boot off the cdrom first, or did he actually just boot partially into Windows again and the boot disk was not set to boot first in the bios order?

Just because he is not connected to the internet, does not mean that he could have inherited a virus by sharing files that were infected with a virus.

[I_LIKE_PIE]