Windows XP startup problem

[swirly]

So a friend (Kat) is having a problem with her windows install. It crashed on her and now its restarting every time she tries to boot the computer. She logged onto IM on her parents computer to ask me for help. I'm including a copy of our chat (editted a lil to try and shorten some, but keep all info) so you all can see what I suggested and what the problems are. Can anybody offer further help than the things that I suggested?

Kat: my comptuer is dead
Kat: it like, froze up
Kat: and i restarted it by turning it off
Kat: and then it froze up again and i restarted again, and now it wont go into windows anymore, it just keeps on giving me the boot log thing
swirly: hmm...so its booting to the loading screen, but won't go any further?
Kat: right
swirly: is there a safe mode in xp you can try?
Kat: did my harddrive crash?:(
Kat: well when i say to go into safe mode it still just restarts and goes back to the log screen thing
Kat: like when it says 'start windows normally' 'safe mode' blehblehbleh
swirly: it never gets past that?
Kat: nope
swirly: well...its going to that part so it seems to be seeing that windows was installed on it...so its accessing the harddrive and seeing something.
Kat: virus maybe?
swirly: could be...hard to say.
swirly: it sounds like something happened to your windows...so...first thing to try I guess would be to try booting to a windows xp cd and do the repair option
Kat: i dont have an xp cd...
Kat: my computer just came installed with it
Kat: i just got a prepackaged computer
swirly: hmm...well it should have came with a restore cd or something
Kat: is a recovery disk the same as a repair disk?
swirly: it might have a repair option, but more often the disk that comes with preinstalled comps just resets them to the factory defaults...so back to how you first got it...which means you lose everything on it
Kat: so basically my only hope is to find my parents repair disc?
swirly: well it would be a normal windows install disk. Those generally have a repair option
Kat: well i can look but ive never been able to find it before so not much hope of me finding one now
swirly: should probably try this
swirly: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;en-us;Q314079
Kat: my computer upstairs doesnt have a floppy disc drive...
swirly: if you want to potentially waste a cd...you could try the boot floppy steps using a cd...your computer can boot to a cd so theoretically it should work the same...I've never tried it though so could be a waste of a cd too
swirly: this is probably over you but...
swirly: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Main_Page
this is a version of linux....its special though. What it does is they give you an iso to download and burn to cd. That cd then can be put into a computer and it will boot and run linux off of that cd. You can then use that working linux running off the cd to access files on the other comp to copy them off (cd comes with burning software) or it should have network stuff working so might be able to move stuff to another comp. I've never done any of this...but its an option you could consider if there are things you want to save really bad

She decided to go to bed and deal with the computer tomorrow. I'm hoping to have some more information by then. So will putting the files for a boot floppy onto a cd work and are there any other things to try?