Recovery problem (Tecra A10 if it matters)

My laptop is the Tecra A10. I'm not sure that matters for my current problems. OS is Windows XP. My laptop will not boot into safe mode and I even have a major problem with the recovery media. Here's what happened:

• During what seemed like a normal session, tried to restart computer.
• Hung/froze during shutdown
• Pressed and held power button to force power-off
• Power on
• Comes to that page that says "Windows did not start normally"
• I choose safe mode
• Halfway through boot into safe mode, it resets and brings me back to "Windows did not start normally"
• I try every option from that page
• Nothing boots
• I insert recovery disk 1. Power on. Press f12 and choose to boot from optical drive
• It tells me something about loading a RAMDISK
• A mouse pointer shows on a black screen. Mouse pointer moves in response to trackpad, but nothing other than blackness is visible. I press every key and button and switch. Nothing happens.

Any ideas welcome. I may have to send it back to the factory. At least I have the deluxe warranty including handling damage

Oh yeah---if I can preserve data that would be great. There are a few days of un-backed-up data.

 

If your hard drive is failing you may not be able to boot back into windows so if you need to save your data you can pull the harrdrive get a cable to hook it up to another computer and access the data that way.

You can hold the 0 key while powering on to do a reimage that way, your recovery cd's may be corrupt.

 

Thanks for the tip.

This computer ships with XP installed, and Win 7 recovery disks. I made Win XP recovery disks as soon as I received it.

Turns out neither of these work, nor does booting+0. I suspect physical damage; the laptop in fact did fall recently.

 

If it was dropped then most likely the hard drive is failing, you said you had coverage for that so I would send it in for repair