Windows XP won't boot up. HELP!

can’t you just recover what you need in safe mode, then reinstall it ?

How? If the operating system is corrupt.

Did you pick a restore point prior to the one you chose? You may have to go back further.

I picked a few restore points, going WAY back. I don’t feel that’s the problem.

@Mr_M Your graphics card may be overheating and causing graphical artifacting (educated guess here based on your symptoms). You could try backing up all of your data and doing a clean install of XP but if its a hardware problem you may be assed out.

Can I back up in Safe Mode? How will the system even SEE the external drive?

If there was a problem with the graphics card, would I be able to use Fluther and see avatars?

EDIT: And if I can determine with certainty that it IS hardware, I would NOT have to reinstall XP, right?

@Mr_M You should have no problem backing up your stuff in safe mode, even external drives. The net isn’t a graphically intensive operation unlike games (SPORE puts a g-card through a workout).

Can you tell me how? I have a 500 gb external hard drive.

At first I thought SPORE was the problem, but I think SPORE just precipitated a pending hardware problem.

PS My laptop is hot on the lower right NOW.

@Mr_M Save everything you want onto your external drive, including your game files (you’ll have to go into the directory and find the saved games folder for each game). Insert your original XP disc or recovery disc (this is the moment of truth) and format your C drive (if that’s what your main drive is named).

It’s not letting me save in safe mode. I tried “backup”.

@Mr_M It’s a pain but you may have to save everything manually.

As in Windows Explorer?

have you tried using a boot disk? Go to this site http://www.allbootdisks.com/ XP disks are at the bottom, make sure you pick the right version for your version of XP and it should be able to fix the problem. If safe mode won’t let you back up try using a Linux Live cd like Mint http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php its an easy to use Linux and will be able to look into everything on your computer and back up all the Windows stuff with no problems…it won’t alter your system as it will run in just the ram…very easy you can’t go wrong and you won’t have a tricky low res Safe Mode to deal with! :)