trouble in xp land

[scifiguy1]

gal at work tells me her daughters pc (with xp on it ) boots up to the desktop and looks fine but if you hit a key on the keyboard or touch the mouse it blanks out the screen and you cannot shut off the pc ....
i am going to have her try booting up in safe mode and go back to "last known good configuration" and see where that gets her....... but i wanted some input from the good folks here as to what might be the problem beforehand so I could do more research into it
I do not have any experience with xp as I have win98 on the pc

just a side note ...i did fix the son-in-laws pc with xp on it..he had spyware and malware , viruses, trojans , and downloaders on there so i d/l -spybot-adaware-avg(free version) and had him up and running before i had finished my yummy easter meal..........All thanks to the help I have received here at pcmech ....thank you all......

Dick

[trulad]

If the last good configuration thingie doesn't work you can always do a repair from the XP cd. That should do it unless she has a virus.
trulad

[scifiguy1]

i was wondering about that ...
how DO i do a repair from the xp cd???
i forgot that last night (tired)

Dick

[RJ]

Boot from the XP CD to start the installation. Windows XP Setup will see that there is already Windows XP on the hard drive and offer you the choice to repair. Then you choose "yes" and the repair continues. It does look kind of like a new installation, so don't get confused about that.

RJ

[scifiguy1]

thanks RJ
i will let them know and get back to you all later today, gotta go to work

Dick

[scifiguy1]

well i talked to her today and she told me her daughters mobo was scorched...seems a roomate had hooked up to it to play games or something and that fried it ...her mom will probably buy her a new pc in a few days ...i made the offer to buy the old one for parts ...will wait and see what happens
Dick