I have a laptop that was restarting in a loop when it loaded windows xp. however it booted in safemode every so often.. however because i had no need of anything on it and it was given to me because it was "broken" i formated it. Now i want to reinstall windows xp but whenever i try it freezes at some point prior to the installation or restarts in a loop, or crashes with a stop screen. but it will boot off a live evaluation cd for Suse Linux that i have... according to a computer technical shop that the person who had it took it too it was a problem with the motherboard. does this seem right considering it would enter windows in safe mode and now will run suse linux live evaluation fine. i would appreciate any suggestions of what i could do to get it to work again as its a pretty decent laptop. celeron pentium 4.
         thanks

EDIT: does anyone know how i can reformat a pc that doesnt have ANY OS on it whatsoever, i need to format it again in a different way so i can install win98 on it then update it to XP

Either a broken motherboard or a corrupt hard-drive.
This happened to me except my computer only loaded to the "Login" screen, the m/b was broken.

last night i managed to install win98 on it, and it seems to be running fine, however whenever i now try and upgrade it to xp i get a PFN_LIST_CORRUPT stop screen and googling suggested i had bad ram. if i can run win98 on it wouldnt that mean it wasnt a dodgy motherboard?

You could try testing your h/d with this tool from seagate.com: SeaTools
It's in ISO format so you can copy it on cd and then start your pc from the cd to test your h/d. It'll take a while, it analyzes if your problem is caused by a (physically) broken h/d, motherboard, whatsoever.

I doubt very much is a motherboard problem (unless there is a connection to the HDD which has become loose). After working with laptops both physically and via technical support I can infact pretty much guarantee its NOT the motherboard and the technician who told you that should be retrained.

Why? Well you stated you could boot a LIVE SUSE distro, meaning everything pretty much works fine when you're not using the HDD.

As AndreY said, download some disk checking programs. The surface scan in MS-DOS Scandisk is often a good check which you can do to determine bad sectors on the drive - generally the first signs of a wearing HDD. After you've attempted that making try some of the other drive diagnostic tools. While doing so make sure you're running in a very basic environment (No memory emulation, no GUI's, etc).

If you can't find anything wrong with the HDD then try some RAM scanning tools, however I doubt its the RAM either.

If all that fails and you're unable to determine the probem then i'd contact the manufacturer of the machine and ask where their local authorised service centres are. If you can, and I stress this, send your laptop to one of the authorised centres. They're qualified in the brand of laptop you're sending them and they'll be able to work out exactly whats wrong with it. I do know that Toshiba has a list of service centres on their website - just specify your location and it lists the closest ones to you..