Have you tried turning it off and on again?

That sounds similar to a situation I dealt with repairing someones computer. I was able to repair the operating system but it immediately shot itself in the foot and proceeded to do the same thing. I was able to copy it over to an alternate drive using a backup and restore program, (It took around 12 or so hours though,  probably due to whatever was wrong with the hard drive.) get it on a working drive and then repair it, and that worked.

Though I can't be certain it's the same issue, it sounds like it might be.

Granted that process takes a functioning computer and a hard drive usb cable, which doesn't sound like that helps very much for you...

Computers are great, aren't they?

I can get access to another computer, but not so much the cable right now. Might try to find one and give it a try though, since it does sound like a similar issue. Trying to use the Windows install disc resulted in the exact same problem, so I can't even repair it that way.

Computers are indeed great. I don't know if there's anything else capable of providing that amount of both joy and frustration.

Ok, if you can do that that's probably a good shot at fixing the issue. Good luck.

BTW: the program I used was called macrium reflect, and will probably useful. It's free and I've used it for all sorts of back up and restore tasks.

Sweet, thanks for the help. I'll try it as soon as I can get my hands on a cable.