HELP - T42p will not boot WinXP - USB or Motherboard issue??

[dmcgibbo]

I have a T42p and when I boot it up the initial IBM screen comes up where you can press an F key to go into different modes or BIOS utility.

But after that the screen is blank and the computer doesn't boot up - just nothing happens (although the battery, power, and dvd drive lights are on)

I pressed F8 and booted in safe mode and it started listing all the drivers it was loading and stopped at "isapnp" - I went into the BIOS and disabled the USB b/c in the past I would have issues with the USB ports not working but that didn't fix anything either.

Do you think a virus wiped out my Windowsa or the USB issue is preventing start-up or the motherboard is fried or the hard drive has an issue or something? Is there anything I can do to get the computer on and boot up so I can pull my files off at least?

[ajkula66]

If your USB ports were flaky in the past, there's a very high likelihood of Southbridge chip failure on that motherboard, and the rest of your post sounds like that might be the case as well...

Boot from a "live" Linux CD with hard drive entirely removed from the machine and let us know how that goes.

Good luck.