What is embaraasing is I do this kind of thing for a living and I pride
myself in solving the tough questions this one has got me sutmped.  If it
were a desktop I might try  swaping out componants, i.e. different video card
different memory even different processor.   My guess is this wouldn't help
because the laptop was working and bovioulsy those three compnants are at the
very least partially working.  
   When I first looked at this laptop I got the error that  the files in
C:\windows\system32\config  were missing in particular the one simply named
system  (with no extension)    If I could have found away to simply replce
them maybe that would have worked, but it seems once I wiped the hard drive
and started a reinstall I was dead cause I can never get it to start the
windows part of the setup it either hangs or reboots.
   My current theory is that either this laptop needs a special video,
chipset or ide driver to  go into "protected or windows graphics mode"  or
their is some kind of hard drive protection scheme in the cmos that prevents
certain op system related writing to the hard drive.
  Any help would be appreciated.  If you can suggest a test I might do (I
would rather not buy an odd memory stick just to test that) would be
appreciated.