My PC is messed up. Please Help!

[The Last Bard]

I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but here's what happened.
Last night my brother networked our two PC's, and this morning we can turn our PC on and everything is great, but after a while it's starts going really slow, pausing every few seconds. And so we shut it down.
But when we bring it back up it goes to this black screen and shows a loading bar like you would see when doing a system restore.

After a while of loading some text pops up and says:

"Cannot start Windows XP, missing file PCI.(Something) so nothing happens and I have to turn it off and on again.
This time the screen is black also, but instead it says:

"Cannot run Windows XP will shut down in 5 secs.
or press 'R' to continue" (This is all just roughly what was said)

So now I'm stuck with a PC with TONS of files that I need (My mom needs most of them) and I'm using my PC to connect to the internet.

So please! If anyone can help, it would be very appriciated!

Thanks

[Slater]

PCI? That's something relating to your network card, I'm pretty sure. Where it went, I don't know. Did you make sure your computers were firewalled before you networked them?

[The Last Bard]

It wasn't me that networked them, it was my brother with his laptop. He actually isn't supposed to be using our internet, but he does anyway. And I'm 95% sure that he turned the firewall off.
It's probably a worm...Agh! And my mom gets so annoyed everytime something happens to our computer, because she uses Quicken and all that stuff, and I'm sure she's going to be thrilled if she finds out all the files are gone.

Hopefully this can be avoided.

[Tringard]

it sounds like a driver or registry setting got corrupted
This list of ideas can get you started on figuring out where something went wrong and fixing it. You'll likely need your windows disks to repair the file that is complaining.
If you need a file now, hopefully you can boot in safe mode and then access it that way.

Another reference is here for troubleshooting.

[TurkishMonky]

and it doesn't seem like all your files would be gone in any case - if you can't figure it out, just borrow another computer, and put your current hard drive on it as a secondary HDD (then you can at least grab your files, worst case)

[glitch1501]

and it doesn't seem like all your files would be gone in any case - if you can't figure it out, just borrow another computer, and put your current hard drive on it as a secondary HDD (then you can at least grab your files, worst case)

agreed

[Warrior4Christ]

You'll likely need your windows disks to repair the file that is complaining.
If you need a file now, hopefully you can boot in safe mode and then access it that way.

Yes, listen to Tringard.
1. Try pressing F8 on startup to see if Safe Mode works. This may let you find the missing file on the Windows disc in a .cab file or something (this may be difficult to do).

2. Otherwise, insert the Windows CD in so it can boot off the CD (change your BIOS settings if need be) and tell it to repair the Windows installation. This takes as long as a real Windows installation, but is very likely to get you computer back to how it was before.

3. Get a new computer..... just kidding

[Kaligraphic]

Get a Mac Mini.

[The Last Bard]

Thank you all for your help. It ended up being a hardware problem, so we sent our PC in to get it fixed.
I just hope they don't reformat the C drive...That would be bad...
But thank you all for your help!

[Mithrandir]

If the problem is indeed a PCI problem, it could be a tough one to fix. PCI is the bus interface that allows various cards (not just network) to talk to the rest of the system. It's usually on the motherboard, making it a costly repair. It may be that there's just a PCI driver messed up, or a single card going bad. If those are the case, the fix shouldn't be as expensive. If you have a corrupt HD, you'll end up with it formatted at the very least and replaced at most. Let us know what happens, ok? (Mostly to satisfy my curiosity).