can't access windows xp professional

[djdbg]

I have been asked by a friend at work to fix her sons laptop.
It is a Dell Latitude D600 running Windows XP professional.

Switch it on and it has "welcome to windows", press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to begin

Then

Log on to Windows

user name and password​

the user name is automatically entered as User, no password necessary, just hit enter or OK.​

Very quickly it shows loading your perosnal settings and then immediately

new box says, "please wait", logging off...

it takes some time to log off and then sticks with just the picture from the desktop showing no icons or start menu etc.

i tried in safe mode but same scenario.

I have spoke with the woman, she doesn't have any boot disks or start up cd-roms. My computer runs on home edition not professional. the good news is she isn't concerned about saving any information, will only be some games that can be re-installed and some pictures the kid has drawn.

Anybody got any solutions?

cheers

 

[cov]

if its dell there are no discs
reboot and before xp screens show up press either f8 or f2 i cant remember which and reinstall from the onboard chipset, this will reload windows xp and should leave the files ok on the hdd

 

[stevedw]

if its dell there are no discs
reboot and before xp screens show up press either f8 or f2 i cant remember which and reinstall from the onboard chipset, this will reload windows xp and should leave the files ok on the hdd

reinstall from the onboard chipset? i didnt know you could do that. i thought it restored windows from the hidden disk partition.