Try powering up, then hit the F8 key about once a second. That may get you into safe mode.
did it. new screen with lots of boot options.
The ones previously mentionded plus
Enable boot logging
enagle VGA mode
last known good config
degugging mode
diable auto restart on system failure
Start windows normally
reboot
returen ot OS choices menue
Just for the heck of it, try last known. If that doesn’t work, do it again and go into safe mode & do a chkdsk.
last known good config
There it is.
If you can get into that screen your problem is solved.
I picked up some type of trojan that the computer refused to allow to load into memory, and it would flash a millisecond error screen and then loop off.
At startup I hit delete several timesto go into CMOS setup then made the CD drive the first boot option, then used the XP CD to check the disk and remove the malicious program.
After that I reset the boot options and most everything was okay.
If you have to use the XP CD you don’t have to reformat anything, you just re install the windows program.
This keeps your data.
If nothing else works, you get another drive and slave the faulty one to it and copy all of your data to it.
You can’t copy programs and make them work without reinstalling them, but this sounds a bit extreme unless your drive has gone South, and then you normally don’t get as far as you have.