hopfully someone here can help out a noob.

ok heres the deal, i was having some problems with xp pro sp2, so i thought i would do a repair.

and the install stage it all of a sudden told me that it could not copy a certain file from my disc... it asked if i would like to brouse to it, wich i did but it still would not accept it. with no way to cancell the repair i had to just continue on without the file. as expected the repair did not work.

what i did not expet was for widows xp to not even load, i cannot start it in any mode, nor an i use the recovery console because dell must have passwored it and i cant get in.

i do not want to format my hard drive since its been awhile since i backed it up.

i have run full diagnostics from dell and it passed them all. i also know all my files are still there cause when i broused for the file that it wont copy i also looked around my hd to see if everything was still there.

hope this makes sense. I simply would like to get widows up and running. since it does not boot i cant seem to do anything. i do not want to format the hd and start all over.

Ah Dell & the restore CD . . . well if you post what the file is that's missing, someone here may be able to help you out. Also which version of XP are you using SP-1 or SP-2?

Treeman