My laptop starts very but displays a light blue screen with mouse curse only.

I ve a min laptop toshiba (portege 3490CT), pentium 3 with in built hard disk. No anti virus software was instaled. The problem is that it starts very. At first it stoped opening all programes giving error message that "some setup file missing"  if opened a file on the desktop/even a program from the startmenu. Now  it has stoped displays the desktop, insteady it displays a blue screen with curser alone & even safemode is nolonger displaying desktop yet  at first it was working well in safemode only. What should i do.

 Another thing is, It has no cd rom and failed to recorgonise external drive. In its bootsquence options, there is FDD option. Does this means that i can use a flash stick to  reprogram ma laptop? Wat volume of aflash do i ned to make bootable one?

You have way more problems with this old computer than are worth the time trying to figure out.  Is it possible to purchase a new on? If so then do so.

Alan <><

regarding the FDD appears to be not recognizable I think this is an issue with a Toshiba make HD! The had the same problem when I tried accessing a Toshiba external Hard drive but no chance it will appear on My Computer the PC just hangs.