Windows XP Home hangs up on "preparing network connection"

Hi,

I am on a laptop with Vista Home.

My friend has a desktop with XP home premium.

Her system hangs up with the above message.

I had her try to start up in Safe Mode, it does start but then automatically closes and restarts resulting in the same message.

I am hoping someone can tell me where I can get a fix for this so that I can call her and tell her what to do. She lives quite a distance away, so I'd like to fix it by 'phone.

Hope you can help.

If necessary, I will get her to write down the errror message that shows just before Safe Mode shuts down and restarts.

Thanks

Duncan

Hi,
If you have Windows XP CD, you can easy use Recovery Tools to check that Windows.

Boot from Windows XP CD, at first screen you'll see options "Press R for Recovery" and do it. In Command Prompt, type following command and press Enter :
CHKDSK /f