I had an issue today where one of my kids shoved a flash card into the computers card reader and it went up into the drive.  I had to remove the entire drive to remove it.  After replacing everything I was unable to BOOT up the computer correctly.  I can do an f8 but it won't open into any form of safe mode.  Also, with f11 I can get to reformating options but nothing will open and I lose control of the mouse and the keyboard.  I have no choice but to hard reboot.  

If I do nothing I just get a continous loop through the start up process and back to safe mode options.

Did I fry something?  The computer is a Gateway 7200 series P4 running windows xp.Was the flash card shoven in when the computer was turned on?

When removing the drive, you may have accidently disconnected certain cables. I suggest that you recheck the wiring.

If all wiring is properly INSERTED, you should remove the card reader bay and SEE if booting without it does work. I actually suggest that you do so immediatly if you suspect that it is damaged.By default when WINXP encounters a system failure, it reboots without warning. The setting that controls this can be changed:

Control Panel/System/Advanced/Settings (Startup & Recovery)/System Failure/Uncheck-Automatically Restart

Try the  BIOS setup and chose the setup defaults option!

Remind me of, one of my sons....shoving the toast in the vcr!