XP freezing on boot

My Gateway laptop has started to hang as it begins to boot. Sometimes it gets to the "Windows XP home" screen other times it does not. After unplugging and taking out the battery in order to reboot several times eventually it works. Sometimes it gets to where it says Windows didn't start correctly would you like to start in safe mode. When I choose safe mode it starts to load and then freezes as its loading the pciidex.sys file. I'm not in front of that computer right now so I'm not sure of the exact log up to that point, but that is def. the file that seems to lock it everytime. Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions on this. Gateway tech support has been pretty worthless to this point, so I figured I'd give the internet folks a shot. Once after many many tries I do get it to boot and have no real problems. Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Bryan

If you manage to get it to boot try this if you haven't already done so:

Go to Start > Run and type in sfc /scannow (make sure you leave the space between sfc and / ).

This will scan your system for corrupt or damaged system files. Have your XP CD on hand as it may be required during the scan.

also you will need to reinstall the service packs.