Thinkpad no longer boots

[ausbob]

I had to power off as it would not shutdown.

Now when I turn it on, it goes through POST fine, starts to boot and then just a blank screen. No curser, no HD activity. Nothing.

I am building XP onto a new HD just to ensure hardware is OK.

Any ideas what may be corrupt?

[ausbob]

Rebuild onto another HD worked fine, so it as expected Windows corruption.

[jbennet]

Do you get the thinkpad F11 recovery prompt?

[ausbob]

Sure do. It starts to boot and then dies.

[jbennet]

Can you do the f11 thing and reinstall from the system partition then do what you have to do (as it reverts to the original os) or dont you want to lose your data? - beware linux etc.... can silently kill the recovery partition