Solved! Compaq Blues

[spiceyweasel]

I have a Compaq CQ50-103NR laptop that is stuck in a perpetual load loop. I get the Compaq screen, followed by a choose your OS screen, then everything goes blank for a few seconds, a cursor pops up for a few blinks, and it all starts over again. I have done everything from hard starts with, and without the battery/power supply to every conceivable BIOS trick, but it will not boot the OS successfully. Is there a simple fix on the mother board or is this thing pretty much toast?

 

[WR2]

Hello spiceyweasel;
'choose your OS screen' What operating systems do you have installed?
Can you get into the BIOS?
You might want to think about building yourself a bootable Rescue CD.

AVG Rescue CD. It's bootable, can do an AV scan for you, plus there are some utility programs like Midnight Commander that will let you rescue important personal files, plus a HDD scan utility program 'TestDisk'