Octopus Overlords

XP locks at the splash screen on start up.
When going into safe mode, Windows starts but locks up before it actually loads. You can see a mouse cursor and the safe mode signature in all four corners

My normal diagnostic tools aren't so much with XP.

Is this likely to be hardware? Software fubarred? Any ideas for testing short of a format and reload?

Have you done anything recently --- WinXP updates or something similar? I've had nightmare experiences with WinXP throwing up after an update.

Usually I unplug EVERTHING from the PC and reconnect just the keyboard and mouse (not through USB) and see what happens.

Are you sure it's locking and not crunching something?

And now is when I get all stupid user.

It's a laptop not on a docking station. There are no peripherals attached.

It's one of my user's machines, but I do not believe he's done any updates or new installs. XP has a tendancy to just grab them though.

He says it let it try to boot for a long time. I gave it two or three minutes in regular and safe modes with not disk spin before shutting it down.

He's not telling you something. Try restoring to the last known good configuration.

I debated that, but I have never done that before. What are the consequences of that? I figure if it comes to an F&R that can't hurt anyway, but 2k and NT both also had option to try and repair the OS and I don't know if XP allows for that or not.

Damn users who go and do things that the company as whole doesn't do.

I figure when it gets to the point that I may sacrifice his data, I give him the choice to automatically lose his data or find a different support. I don't even have a similar machine (nor make) to swap his HD out into or latch on to another machine to recover data.

It won't hurt anything. It doesn't touch documents or anything like that. If the machine won't load Windows you really have nothing to lose.

If that doesn't work, stick another HD in there and boot the machine with Knoppix. Format the new HD with FAT32 (Linux barely supports writing to NTFS) and then transfer the files off the NTFS HD to the FAT32 one. That way you'll at least have all his stuff saved.