Laptop cannot restart

[shalvinlawrence]

hi guys, im new to this site, im a final year management student in the university of the south pacific in Fiji islands.
i installed windows sp2 on my compaq presario laptop, after installation n activities it gave an option to restart now or later. i clicked on restart now but during the restart process it cannot restart n keeps repeating n doesnt show the username n password screen. i tried all options it gave when pressing f8. so what can i do??
do i have to reinstall windows o/s software n do i loose all existing information on my hard disk?

[ebarrera]

i assume you tried booting in safe mode, as this is one of the options you get.

if you cannot boot in safe mode even, it sounds like you may have to start from scratch. Unless your PC has a hidden system restore partition that you can access and restore from

[hughv]

Try a repair install:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
Many computers had trouble with SP2, and you may find info on this at the Compaq site.
If you write back, include the model number.

[shalvinlawrence]

its a compaq presario 2500

[lordx78]

Boot into safe mode, backup all your data and then reinstall the OS again. This time choose to format the notebook hardisk with NTFS option*. Your problems will be solved.

*Not the NTFS Quick Format