I have a Sony VAIO laptop, about 2-3 yrs old, with Winddows 2000 Professional on it. Last night, i started it up and it booted fine. Now this afternoon, i go to turn it on, and it does absolutely nothing. When i start it and let it *try* to boot, it will show the row of white bars, connect 2 of them, and stop dead. Starting in Safe Mode, it starts listing files it accesses, and stops dead, listing only 4 lines.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT\System32\ntoskrnl.exe
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT\System32\hal.dll
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT\System32\BOOTVID.DLL
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT\system32\config\system

absolutely nothing after that

Anything you can suggest i can probably manage to do.
Open to suggestions, i will bow down to you for helping!!
this laptop has my LIFE on it, and i have no clue waht to do

Well since it will not boot in safe mode the first thing you could do is create/obtain a Windows 2000 Boot disk. Please reply if you need help making one. If you boot from the disk and windows loads successfully then the problem is with one of the following: *Ntldr, *Ntdetect, *boot.ini, or there is a problem(virus) with the Master Boot Record. In which case for the files mentioned with the * they can be replaced by placing the file on a boot floppy and overwriting the old files. However, if the computer still refuses to boot, then it more than likely came with a recovery disk, boot with that and go into the recovery console, and type chkdsk /r at the prompt, if you recieve a message stating there is an invalid MBR, then run fixmbr. There are more steps but until I know the results of these steps they are of no use, reply to this and tell me which you have done and/or what has helped.

thanks :D but i went a little further than that. I installed UNIX a few hours ago :( sorry your advice was fruitless, but ill remember it in case my friends have probs with their 2000 versions :D t

Thanks a bunch man i appreciate it

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.