CONSTANT REBOOT PROBLEM XP home edition

[Emsc74]

Last night while playing an online game my laptop froze up.  I ened up having to power it down via the pwr button.  Upon reboot of laptop windows did a scan due to the sudden shut down of the pc.    Upon completion of the 3 step scan there was a message that said something like unkown hard disc error.  Not thinking i just resterted the laptop without writing down wat the exact message was.  Since then my laptop will only get to the point that u can get into bios the n goes to a black screen with a single cursor in top left corner and reboots.  I have checked cmos, cleaned entire laptop inside and out, tried to find a hard drive diagnostics for Toshiba but found nothing.  I would try to use system recover disk that came with the laptop but its now available due to the fact that I recently moved and my stuff hasnt arrived from bahrain yet.  No original XP CD came with the laptop when i bought it in 2004, jsut the recover disc.  Is there any site i can download a Win XP Home edition Recovery disc or perhaps a diagnostics program for my Toshiba MK8025GAS 80G Hard drive.   And yes i can hit F8 to get to the options for Safe mode/last know good comfig/Debug/normal mode....I've tried all and none work.  They have same result with the laptop rebooting over and over and over.  I have Nortan 360 on my pc and do regular scans every week.  Im assuming the problem is either the Hard drive or XP.  I would take the hard drive out of my laptop but due to the fact that I dont currently have a case that will adapt the laptop hard drive to the inputs of a regular desktop pc.  My biggest fear is that im going to have to replace the hard drive which in turn will focre me to purchase XP since Best Buy/Circuit City (been so long i dont remember) never provided an original XP disc with the laptop and neither is the problem.  Please give any info that could help with this issue. thank you

Toshiba Satellite A75-S229

3.2GHz pentium
1.5G Ram
80G hard drive
Windows XP home edition
Norton 360

[Zylstra]

Just a heads up:
We cant give you a download for the Windows XP CD

We can rule out virus (thats a good thing)

My best suggestion:
Wait until you get the restore disk
There may be no way to recover your data, since it seems to be total data corruption.
When you get the restore disk, choose the repair option, and you >should< be able to keep all your data (and that saved game!)

[Emsc74]

It will probably take a moth b4 my shipment get here and to be honest Im not sure the recoverydisc is in it.  Never had to use it before now.  Is there anywhere to purchase a recovery disc?  Or are the recovery disc's specific to an XP installation

[scaptic]

you dnt want to mess up your laptop get a technician

[Zylstra]

You should be able to contact your laptop manufacturer and ask them about the purchase price of a recovery CD for your laptop.

[Emsc74]

I put a new XP disc in the Cd/dvd drive but i only get media failure message when it tries the boot from the drive. any ideas?

[Zylstra]

I put a new XP disc in the Cd/dvd drive but i only get media failure message when it tries the boot from the drive. any ideas?

What is the exact error message?

[Emsc74]

The laptop reboots so i cnat quite get the messeage written down...

[Zylstra]

The laptop reboots so i cnat quite get the messeage written down...

There should be a key somewhere on your laptop that says "Pause/Break"
Press it right when the error message comes up.
This should stop the BIOS from continuing on to the next boot device

Possible problems:
Incorrect Boot Order

[Emsc74]

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 INTEL CORPORATION

For Realtek RTL8139(X)/8130/810X PCI FAST ETHERNET CONTROLLER v2.13 (020326)
pxe-e61: Media test falure, check caple
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE Rom

This it all it says when i try to boot form cd/dvd drive.  I have the win xp disc in when i try this.  Seems that is saying the drive isnt connected properly.

[Zylstra]

It appears to be attempting to boot from your network

If you know how:
Enter your BIOS, and make sure that the CD/DVD drive is set to load before the hard disk drive
(Then exit and save the changes)
Or (better yet)
If (when you start the computer) your BIOS screen shows a key to load a boot menu, press that key, and select the CD drive.

This is a legal XP CD, correct?