Load Error! Acer Laptop Will Not Boot

I'm not sure if this counts as a hardware or software problem, sorry if I've posted it in the wrong forum.

My parents have an acer laptop, it is about 3 years old, it has a centrino 1.6, 256mb ram, 40GB HD, CDRW and windows XP.

it was working perfectly, and when last used it shut down normally. However on trying to boot it up today it gets to a screen that says �load error! "Press any key to reboot"however when pressing a key it just displays the load error message again and seems stuck in a loop.


This happens only a couple of seconds into the boot sequence, the screen immediately before the error screen gives the following information:

Base Memory xxxxx
Extended memory xxxxx
Total memory xxxxxx

Auto detecting IDE device
Primary master xxxxxx
Secondary master

Insyde ACPI bios initialised

At the bottom of the screen it says � Press F2 to enter system configuration�

If I press F2 at that point I get into the BIOS.

I did not know what to do, I wondered whether Windows had been corrupted so decided to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows using the recovery CD�s supplied with Acer.


After going into the BIOS to change to boot device to the CD drive, the clean reinstall seemed to go well, everything progressed, as normal and every thing seemed to being reinstalled. I was optimistic that all would be well.

However, on rebooting after the reinstall I got the same error message as I had done before. (I had changed the boot device to drive C)

I tried doing a full reinstall again, though of coarse it did not help, and right now I don�t have a clue how to progess in trying to solve the problem.