Won't Load hard drive??

Hi Again all, (I am posting this for a friend).
I have this friend, and he is having A LOT of trouble with his older Thinkpad. When it is turned on, it does a memory check (or something to that sort) and goes to Windows 98 Starting Up.. Screen. This stays on for about 5-7 min, and then pops up 'What mode do you want to load Windows in? Safe, ect. If we do All execpt for DOS It goes Back to Loading Windows 98 for 30 mins and then pops up 'Cannot Intilize Drive (What ever the hard drive is) .' Retry or Reboot. If we do DOS, I'll type in stuff like Explorer, and commands like that, and it says: This computer does not run a Full version of windows. What the heck! He tells me it was working fine the past week, able to open applications, ect. How ever, because he bought it about 2 Months ago and thought it was about a 2002 Model laptop, I think he may have tried to install some big game on it (he's a beginner). He sent it in to be repaired a while back, but I think he cancelled it cause the dude wanted too much, cause he couldn't find a solution.
Any help?
Thanks,
~Winmeuser~

 

mmmm.... a Thinkpad....alright, I'll take a stab

Can you (maybe you should get hold of it) get to Safe Mode?

Stalls at boot-up are generally due to new hardware/drivers (have new drivers been installed?)
or
it is having problems with programs that run at startup.

Does your friend know of any changes that were made to the system before the problem started?

Matt