xp pro, service pack 1 (beta)

hi guys...

maybe one of you techies can help me here.

TuttiFrutti has a gateway laptop that crashed. it gets halfway thru the POST n shuts off. using safemode i can get in, but there it tells me some important file is missing or currupted.

this is what i know, so far... she bought the puter with xp pro installed, prior to the release of service pack 1. when MS released the first service pack, it was only available in a 'beta' version. she downloaded it off the internet n installed it. last year, it crashed. come to find out, she didn't have all the cds needed to re-install the os, and i can't find the beta version anywhere on the net. it seems MS won't support it , and the techies at the MS boards have little to offer in ideas of what to do . their usual response is 'f-disk n re-install'.... which to us, means purchasing the os again, as she doesn't have a third disk that the os installer says she should have. and, all attempts to install sp 1 and other patches have failed...

i realise this is not 'all the info' you might need, but if any of you feel up to the challange then i'll dig out her laptop n get ya more.