No boot up, not even in safe mode, black screen

Hello guys!

I'm trying to troubleshoot a friend's Dell Laptop Inspiron E1405 with Windows XP Media Center Edition.

I'm not sure what happened to it but when you turn it on, it goes into the "Windows did not start successfully" menu and regardless of what I choose it freezes.

Then I hit F8 to get into the Advanced Options Menu. There, regardless of the option I choose (Safe Mode, Enable Boot Logging, Safe Mode with networking, Start Windows Normally, Etc.) it goes into a black screen and nothing else happens.

I'm trying to at least boot up so I can save documents and images. What else can I try other than repair the installation with a Windows Xp CD?

Thank you very much!

are you booting up the laptop with any external devices attached such as external HDD'S or flash drives??

If so then try removing them and restarting.

No, nothing attached to it.
even double-checked to make sure no USB drives or any smaller devices where attached.