Laptop wont start or boot up

Sounds like its trying to boot but wont. Might have an issue with the hard drive more than likely.

Try pressing either F1, F2, F11 or F12. One of those should either get you to the BIOS or the Boot Menu. If its in the Bios you can go to the Boot secetion and change the DVD to the first boot device and try booting from the CD again.

If you get to the boot menu you should be able to use the arrow keys and move up and down and then press enter to select the DVD drive.

Now if you try installing windows I hope you have a backup. You'll end up erasing all your files. There are ways to not erase it but a lot of times that can cause issues.

With your Windows cd in the drive on your laptop, power on the laptop and immediately begin pressing the F12 key repeatedly until you start hearing beeps. You should get a screen that looks reasonably similar to this: http/www.rangify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Boot-Menu-Selection.jpg

You can select to boot from the cd to attempt a repair/recovery or try changing some BIOS settings. If you want to try a recovery, boot from the cd and when prompted, press R to repair a Windows XP installation.

If repairing a hard drive with multiple operating systems, select the appropriate one (XP) from the menu. If you have only one operating system, enter 1 to select it.

Enter the administrator password if prompted.

To fix the MBR, use the following command:

fixmbr

This assumes that your installation is on the C:\ drive. You will be presented with several scary warning lines, the reading of which will make you want to say no. Microsoft is exceptionally vague regarding the conditions under which fixmbr can cause problems although they are clear about the consequences (losing all data on the hard drive), so use this at your own risk.

Type y and ENTER to fix the MBR.

Type exit to leave the recovery console and reboot.

As a side note, you can also run "fixboot" after "fixmbr" is done and then once those two are done, I recommend running "chkdsk /r" until it stops finding errors on the drive. Once all three are done, reboot and see what happens.