i don't know how to explain it in the title, but this is what happens:

at startup, you get to the loading screen(windows xp pro with the three moving blocks). as soon as that's done, you get the blueish screen that has "windows xp" just to the right of the center and then it just stays there forever. that's the screen you get when you clicked on your username, but then it doesn't even get to "loading your personal settings".

getting to startup options, i selected "safe mode", but it loads all the drivers and gets to mup.sys (i think that's what it's called - it's the last one anyway) and then it just hangs.

trying a repair install from the windows disk doesn't do anything. it loads all the files it needs and then asks what you want to do. select "install windows", hit f8 to agree and then select the windows installation i want to repair(there's only one) and then press "r". the progress bar starts going and it checks the disk and so on. as soon as the progress bar gets to the end, it says "setup has modified your installation and needs to restart" or something in that area.

restarting it takes me back to the beginning and nothing works. i don't think i can format it, because there is lots of sensitive data and programs on it that the lady wants/needs. fomatting it is also my last option. if push comes to shoot, then i'll probably have to ghost the thing onto another harddrive and then reload it.

anyone got any clues? did i explain this nicely?

thanks guys.

I am not sure this will help, but boot with your Windows XP Disc and select the 'r' option for the src (system recovery console), once there type 'chkdsk /p' then hit enter; it should fix it.

ahhh... was at home yesterday and for some reason i thought about it again(at around 8pm). came to work and nobody had tried changing the on it. just thought of that pc and how odd it was that i loaded windows on a different harddrive(so that i could copy the old data over and then ghost it onto the old harddrive) and it worked fine, but then as soon as i put the graphics card, modem ram and network card back in there, it just randomly rebooted.

came here, took out the ram, put in a new 256mb and hey presto!! the repair went through on the old harddrive this time and everything was there and working.

hope this help the other people out there.