[Zxian]

Is it Windows that says "Power Saving Mode"? or is it BIOS (just plain text on the screen). When do you see this message? After the Windows boot screen (the one with the scrolling bar across the bottom)? Before?

Find a copy of Knoppix (Google it) and burn it to a CD. Boot from the CD.

If the problem doesn't arise (i.e. you can get into Knoppix) then it means that we've got an XP problem.


If the problem is with XP, try taking your hard drive out of the computer and installing it in another computer. You should be able to access all the files on the other computer. If you run into troubles in your My Documents folder with permissions, you can reset the permissions for the folders. Write back here if you need to do that.

Once you've backed up all the files, we can start playing around to see if we can resolve the problem.

Put your Windows XP CD in the CD-Drive and boot from it. You should see a message right at the start that asks you to press a button to load the Recovery Console. Press the button (I think it's F2). Once the recovery Console has loaded, type in sfc /scannow. Once that has completed, see if the computer will boot.

Let us know how things go.