Diagnosing the problem with this Pavillion ze5700 laptop

Hi,

A friend has given me a laptop to look at as I know something about
computers but I'm no expert at all. It's not working - possibly due to
having the cooling fans blocked by being used on a bed.

When you turn it on there's the usual message about BIOS setup and
then the screen is blank for around 60 seconds with the HD light on
constantly. Eventually the white dotted bar that you get on the screen
when Windows XP comes up appears on the screen.

Another 60 seconds or so with the HD light on it fills in a bit of the
bar. Another delay and this appears -

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or
corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

It says I might be able to repair it with the Widnows Setup disc.

I'm not sure it's just a corrupt HD though - it's going so slow that I
wonder if the HD is damaged.

How could I find out? Is there a system test CD that I could download?
I couldn't see one at HP's site.

Should the yellow light at the front always be on when the power lead
is in?

Cheers

Peter

.

Relevant Pages

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