XP won't boot

[hmtourniquet]

Ok, long history made short: I have a Toshiba laptop, only a little over a year old, it's pretty nice. I got the 3-year warranty. It had a problem with shutting down randomly, took it in for repairs, they replaced the motherboard fan, and it worked fine. Since then, I haven't been able to burn a CD (this actually happened to be legal mp3's. seriously). Anyway, I finally tried the regular burn-from-an-explorer-window burn to see if that would work, and got an error after it started to write. Something about the media not being right. This was on an ominous blue screen, so I had to shut it down by holding down the power button. The problem now is, it won't start up at all. I've tried in safe mode, and it seems to get only partway through before it stops, realizes it doesn't work, then quits and tries to start up normally (going to regular start up screens). But those never lead anywhere; it just sits with the starting-up screen on, and doesn't do anything else. I tried letting it run, and it went for about 10 minutes, then started to try again, so I shut it off again. Anyway, this is very frustrating because I'm at college, don't have a car, and the place to take it to for repair is an hour from here.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to boot it? I do have a recovery DVD with a factory image on it, and I might be able to format the hard drive with it without starting up. However, I really don't want to lose the stuff I've put on it since I got it back (had to backup everything before it went in for repairs, so I wouldn't lose everything, but it isn't a good option anyway). I can hit F8 and get to the startup with options (safe mode, boot logging, etc), and have tried several of those, but it still doesn't work.

All help will be appreciated.

[chuck4456]

The repair shop may some be distance away, but I would grab a friend with a car and take it right back. The ominous blue screen indicates (to me) that they didn't reinstall all (or any of the drivers) and the rest is still a guess. Take it back.

[Panama Red]

You might want to invest in one of these handy adapters. You can pull your lappy hdd, install it in a desk top pc and save your files before returning it to the repair shop. If they nuke and pave your drive, everything is gone!

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108&cat=HDD