as i was listening to music on my Toshiba pavilion s101, the system turned off and began to restart. however, right after the widows xp logo displayed a message on an all blue screen informing about a missing .dll file. i thought about reinstalling the windows. i slid my windows disk in the CD ROM, switched the booting device to be the CD ROM. the system now saying press any key to boot from CD... i pressed enter and the system said "please wait while setup inspect your hardware configuration" sooner later the following message displayed "inspection failed"

how do i fix this and what happened to my laptop please?

can you get the exact message concerning the missing file?

Can you start up in safe mode? reboot and immediately start toggleing the F8 key till the start up page comes up asking to boot into various configurations. first try to reboot into the "last good known configuration" if that fails return to that page and boot into safe mode....when in safe mode...navigate...start>programs>accessories> system tools> system restore...try to restore to a prior date from the calendar(the bold dates are the restore points that are available)

Post back with the details.

thanks for your prompt response.

i tried the safe mode and last known configs in the startup options menu you mentioned. i ended up getting the same"the missing .dll file" message. i tried to get you the exact message but the message disappears so fast and the file name is hard to memorized.

try to use the "pause/break" key when the error comes up...that should freeze the window till you are done copying the message. to end the pause just hit esc key!