Can't boot into anything

[Static EMP]

I found an old laptop that I want to fix, but am having some trouble. I'm getting the blue screen at bootup that says logon process terminated unexpectedly.

I wnat to go ahead and reformat the whole thing, however, it won't boot from a cd even when i set it to. and if i try booting from a boot disk it won't let me access the hard drive. is there anything i can do? it's an old dell laptop running on win xp home.

unfortunately, it can only have either the floppy drive or the cd rom drive in at one time. i just want to be able to access the hard drive some how so i can go ahead and wipe it out.

i don't know why it wont boot from the cd even when i set it to, but if anyone can help me out, it would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

 

[airfoil]

It may very well be that the hard drive on the laptop is dead. When do you receive the 'logon process terminated unexpectedly' message? Does it begin to boot into the OS?

 

[Static EMP]

it begins to boot, and then gives me the error and reboots.

i think i've concluded that the cd-rom drive is busted (which is why i can't boot into it) and am gonna by a replacement off ebay.