XP will not boot

[sdr77]

My son has a Dell laptop running XP Pro that will not boot and I believe he has a virus. I got the laptop to boot to the desktop one time, but it took 10 minutes. Then as it was redrawing the icons it blue screened and said that there was a problem and to remove my anti-virus and firewall software. Now the system only boots to the Windows XP logo screen and then freezes. I used a recovery disk, but that did not work. I also tried Power Suite Pro, but once again had no success. I am thinking we may need to blow out the hard drive and start over, but I wanted to check with you first. Thank you for your time and support.

[NonSuch]

As you cannot get the system to boot up, it is most likely either terribly infected or it has a hardware problem. Without logs, which obviously cannot be produced on an unbootable system, there is no way that we can remotely ascertain which particular issue is causing the system's problems. A reformat and reinstallation of the operating system may resolve the problem. If not, then you will probably need to take it into a trusted local shop where you can get a more definitive diagnosis.

As this issue is beyond the scope of this forum, this topic is now closed.