Win XP boot errors

[Total Immortal]

So I'm visiting my dad for the holidaze, and I flicked on the home computer to try something, and it will not boot past the bios. It will detect the hard drives/disc drives, and then it gives me that infamous ntoskrnl.exe error, saying that it is either "missing or corrupt." That's problem #1, which I probably could fix on my own HOWEVER the computer is NOT reading the keyboard or the mouse! I have an optical mouse which always lights up when plugged in, and that's not lighting up; AND the scroll lock, caps lock, and num lock lights are NOT turning on on the keyboard when the computer boots up, so I can't get into bios to tell it to boot off of the god **** CD rom! What do I do now?

 

[Osiris]

Miscellaneous corruption
Corrupt boot.ini file.
Missing boot.ini file.
Missing or corrupt ntoskrnl.exe file.
Corrupted hard disk drive or severely corrupted Windows.


Format it with a windows 98 bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com

 

[Total Immortal]

Yea but, the problem is I can't tell my computer to boot off of the CD rom because it can't tell that the keyboard is connected... And I don't have a floppy drive in my laptop, so I can't make floppy drive boot disks..

 

[Osiris]

is this pc old? what os did it have?

 

[Total Immortal]

The computer is cerca '02. It's a used Alienware that my friend was getting rid of and gave to me cheap. Had no problems at all with it until about 6 months ago. THe problem that I had six months ago was something with the ram sticks. The computer would not start up, it would beep incessantley, and someone on here told me to switch positions of the sticks, and that took care of it. Oddly, now the computer starts, and when it gets to the part where it finds the 4 drives, it will start beeping.. but it's more like a strange ticking sound, very rapidly. Even more strangely is that the ticking will drastically slow down if I unplug the keyboard. And as soon as I plug the keyboard back in, the ticking speeds up again.

 

[Osiris]

what you need to do is get a external flopy drive and format it.

 

[Total Immortal]

I think there might be a hardware problem, though. THe problem that I had six months ago was something with the ram sticks. The computer would not start up, it would beep incessantley, and someone on here told me to switch positions of the sticks, and that took care of it. Oddly, now the computer will start, and when it gets to the part where it finds the 4 drives, it will start beeping.. but it's more like a strange ticking sound, very rapidly. Even more strangely is that the ticking will drastically slow down if I unplug the keyboard from the back of the computer. And as soon as I plug the keyboard back in, the ticking speeds up again.

 

[Osiris]

so how far a long are you now?

 

[Total Immortal]

Haven't done anything : ( I don't have access to a floppy drive, so I can't make boost disks AND the computer won't detect my keyboard or mouse

 

[Osiris]

you didnt try the memory like you were talking about?