a friend lent me his laptop to fix. it was all virussed up and was running too slow to use so all i did was re install xp. it took about 4 attempts to get a working copy of xp onto it because the installer kept freezing but that's sorted now. but... every time i start it up, as it's logging in i get a message saying something aloong the lines of, "one of the files containing the systems registry data had to be recovered by use of log data or an alternate copy. The recovery was successful." I'm a bit worried about this as it sounds serious, although once the computer ahs logged in it seems to work fine. any suggestons?

You have checked the health of the drive, multiple failed installs and corrupt file warnings either means a crappy modified XP disc, or hard drive is getting ready to fart it's last fart.

cd is fine, it's the one that came with the pc
hdd is another matter. i scanned it with chkdsk before installing and it did come up with a few errors.

i told him today that it needed a new hdd. i expected him to b a bit pissed off at least but all he said was something along the lines of 'hey, that's life'

i would certainly be a bit more annoyed if my hdd died!