Laptop wont run, best buy says hardware ok

I have a 3 year old Hp dv1170 or dv1000 style laptop, has worked flawlesly for 3 years but the other day I kept getting the blue screen and restart after only being on for a few minutes. Then later that week it would only start in safe mode.
I took it to the Geek squad at best buy, they sent it off to the head Geeks I guess, somewhere out of state. anyway they told me last night that they checked everything and determined it was a software issue, all hardware checked out ok and I would have to reinstall the xp orperating system. I have all of the software that came with it. What do I need to do to start this process since I can only get the computer to run in safe mode? Is there any docs. I could download that takes me thru the process. Best buy wants $120. to do this. Thanks in advance, Gary

 

$120? God they are crazy.

You put the windows disk in the drive, you boot your computer and on the bios screen (HP logo I guess) you press a key (F4,F8 or Del usually) so you enter in the bios configuration page, you go into boot devices priority and set CD-ROM as the first one then you restart and it will says "press any key to boot from CD/DVD" and from then, you follow the onscreen instructions

 

normaly when BSOD happens there are two things you can do. System Restore point if you have that enabled. Or do a repair install of the OS that way it just reinstall Xp and does not delete your programs and what not. To do system restore you gotta do it in safe mode its kinda easy just go back to a date in which this never happened. System restore will revert back the changes but will NOT delete files so no worries.

if you do a repair install it just reinstall OS

 

Do you have the restore disks or did HP provide you full XP OEM CD's?

 

I have all the disks, xp, and all the different drivers, there are several discs.The operating system cd says microsoft windows xp home SP2 , contains software and drivers already installed. For software reinstallation and repair only.

 

You should be good to go then. The only concern for someone inexperienced is the driver installation. If you have the original manufacturer's discs, then it's really easy as everyone said. In fact, you can probably boot to the CD without modifying the boot order in the BIOS. A lot of manufacturers put peripheral connections ahead of the hard drive in case you need to boot from CD/floppy/USB, etc. Give it a try by inserting the first disc, rebooting, and following the instructions.

Make sure you save what you can first. If you can save things to CD/USB drive, you could salvage some documents before the reformat.

 

Don't trust the Geek Squad.. That's all I can say about that.

 

geek squad=ROFLMAO


they're morons...i bet 90% of this forum knows more than thoe ******* ripoffs about comps

 

Do you know of anything different before and after the BSOD? Did windows update run? Did you install a new piece of software? Did another piece of software update?

 

If 90 percent of the people know more than the best buy guys, how come not one person has asked What the Blue Screen STOP ERROR was? And how come not one person has contradicted the premise that a reinstall is necessary?

A Blue Screen error rarely requires a reinstall. It requires addressing the problem noted by the blue screen.

OP, in the blue screen there is a message that starts with

STOP:.....

what follows that?