Computer question: My Compaq Presario 2500 laptop faults during boot-up ..

It never makes it to the Windows start screen: it flashes an error flag (in blue screen, which I cannot read, of course), then attempts a restart, where it repeats the same process, over and over, ad infinitum ....

I believe the hard drive is full, and completely exhausted ... It had been bogging down pretty badly lately, and I had thought about dumping some stuff off before this happened ... but I procrastinated .... Now I cant get in ...

I believe I need to do this:

Create a CD boot disk (on another computer) with the bare minimum DOS, just to be able to get in and have access to the directories for erase activities. .. Remember most laptops have no floppy drives ... mine doesnt ...

Create a RAM drive and transfer the DOS to it for execution since I have no other available volatile mass storage (since my main drive is full ... ) ...

I would like to transfer my important family photo JPG's to a writable CD, but Im not sure I can execute CD-R operations from a DOS environment ... Short of actually dumping the family photos to CD-R, I could probably get away with finding enough CRAP files to dump so I obtain enough overhead in mass storage to operate windows again, and THEN do what I should have done: save to CD all my important files, and clean up my damned overstuft computer ...

A few questions for the geeks:

1) Which DOS is usable for Windows XP-Pentium IV laptops these days ? ...

2) Is this a viable approach (see above) to execute a fix/repair ???

3) What are the commands for creating a RAM drive ? ... My puter has 512MB, certainly enough for performing DOS operations in RAM ....

4) Are there generic CD-R DOS drivers that can manage CD record functions in a DOS environment ? ...

5) SURELY I am not the first laptop owner to exhaust their disk space: are there Off-The-Shelf solutions available in the marketplace to rescue my poor abused laptop, and save the family heritage ? ..

ANY Nerd help here would be greatly appreciated .....

Thanks in advance ....

BTW? : Have I told my fellow DUers lately how much I love you ? ...

Not enough ...

No one tells me this stuff ....

or "last know good configuration." I don't believe a HD nearing capacity will give you an unbootable system.

but I'll post to kick it for ya-thank me when it gets close to the bottom of the page, if it's needed. :D

on edit: Looks like you are getting some help-to try to boot in safe mode or last known good config, you need to hit the f8 key during boot-for me, it's between the gateway and windows splash pages. I don't know if you have a chance to make f8 work for you...

if the disk is really just full, try to boot in safe mode and delete or copy files from there. Or one of the other boot options.

But, Compaq's versions of Windoze are notoriously sucky, so the odds are it's a bigger problem. Or, the drive just might be fried.

Try booting normally, but verifying every step and don't forget the "echo on." That way, you'll find the routine that crashes the machine and bypass it when you reboot until you can get a fix. I had to do that sometimes several times a day on a particularly sucky Presario running Win98.

If all else fails, a recovery or Windoze boot CD and see if you can boot that way and then look around for what the trouble is. Maybe even reinstall Windoze if you have an installation disk. Stuff should have come with the computer.

Lastly, I've never done this, but there is the Recovery Console on the setup CD. It's supposed to be able to do stuff.