Perhaps you need to increase the screen brightness (on my Dell Latitude D510 the hotkey is Fn+Up Arrow).
Just a suggestion, but it might just work.

Hope that helps,

Quick guide (which should work):

1) Boot from the CD
2) When you get to partition selection delete them all and then hit ENTER on the blank space.
3) Format it using NTFS or FAT32, whichever you...

I don't know what's up with your computer, but that's not important.

The important thing is you get your paper in, right? My only suggestion is to take out your hard drive and put it in another...

Seeing as you have given me nothing to work with, your best bet is to go into safe mode and run a System Restore.

Tips: don't let your son dissasemble your laptop ;).

On a more serious note, try opening it back up again and looking for any loose wires or dust that might have got into the contacts.

How far...

I'm confused. Why are you trying to access the shared drives on XP? The shared drive links not to the actual place on the drive, but to the computer.

If the data was on a shared drive, it will...