I have a user who has a laptop (Compaq e500 with Win 98) that when booted goes through the Compaq bootup screen directly to "restoring from hibernation".

It does not respond to ctrl/alt/del and rebooting just brings us back to "restoring from hibernation". I had her remove all power and the battery for over 2 hours and it does not boot past this screen. I let it sit at that screen for hours with no effect.

I know how to turn off hibernationa and other power saving features and whatnot, but I've never seen a laptop get stuck at boot like this that removing all power did not cure. Any ideas would be helpful.