[amb3sc]

Hi

I have a Dell Inspiron 1300, it has windows xp sp2 installed on it. recently windows stopped loading. It just shows the loading screen and hangs there. The progress bar is moving but windows does not load. I tried to reinstall windows from a cd that I have used many many times before. The problem is that the system is not able to boot from the cd. Even when I press F12 and select the cd\dvd drive to boot from, it goes straight to the hard drive. I have also tried to boot from ubuntu cds and a cd with booting tools that I have used many times before. I then tried to boot from a USB drive that I've formatted and added windows installation files on it using WinSetupFromUSB and the booting went fine and the text part of the setup started and presumably loaded all the necessary files for installation. Then the setup stops at the "Setup is Starting Windows" screen and stays there. The system is not hung as I can reboot it with Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Please if someone can help me with this issue I would really appreciate the assistance.