I've never really had to do any of this before but Im really pumped to get started.

I booted her up and the first thing that I got was:

SMART Failure predicted on hard disk 0:ST980829A-(PM)

WARNING Immediately back up your data and replace you hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.

F1 to continue

Then I got through the boot up screen and the welcome screen until I got the "ACTIVE DESKTOP RECOVERY" screen.
clicking the "Recover Active Desktop" button got me an Internet Explorer script error (I have never used IE on the machine - nor any machine actually). So I just turned off the Active Desktop.

Even though I hadn't Yet seen the BSOD the whole system was feeling lice ridden and really bogged down.

I was in the middle of copying the sys specs from System Information when *WHACK* .......... BSOD.
It wasn't even there long enough to see what it said.

Anyways, I was going to wait until I could get more of the system info. before posting but its clogged up and seems it will be taking its time (like senior citizens driving in a school zone on sunday). These are the sys. specs as I have them right now:

Os: xp home
Vers: 5.1.2600 service pack 3 Build 2600
Manufacturer: HP
Model Presario V2000 (ET933UA#ABA)
Type:x86
Processor:x86 Family 15 Model Stepping 2AuthenticAMD~1790 Mhz
SMBIOS Vers.:2.31
Win Directory: C://WINDOWS
Sys Directory: C://WINDOWS/System32
Boot device: \Device\harddiskvolume1
Hardware Abstraction Layer: <this is when BSOD hit>

Iv been trying to get back to the System Info now for the last half hour, but its so lice ridden that its practically stopped in its tracks.. its been awhile and I suspect that BSOD will pop up pretty soon.

Its a great little lappy, I'd love to be able to wipe it clean and get it up and running again, I just dont know where to start - I have the time.
Like I said though, Im not sure where to start and Im not even sure where to start researching (AO has always been my failsafe lol)

I'll get the rest of the sys specs up when I can finally get to them ...

EDIT: Is there anyway to get BSOD to stay long enough to read it, or will I just need to have my phone on cam mode and ready??