Winxp hangs at logo screen

[MH_Wadester]

ok..... i dont know if this is the right place to post this but i dont know and anyway heres my problem when i turn on my computer it gets to the windows loading screen with the blue bars moving across the screen and just sorta stalls there and continues to do the same thing without out any progression any further for ease of typing i have found a post that basically has nearly identical problem .... although the solution they provide doesnt solve mine . http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com...go-screen.html although on mine i dont have a dual boot and only have windows xp SP2.... i dont have the installation disc because my copy is a friends copy of windows my computer has been working perfectly fine and normal until yesterday when this happened.... i tried system restore similar to that post but didnt really work.....iv tried checking optimized defaults and fail & safe modes in bios but still doesnt work... iv also tried checking /sos in msconfig and rebooting but when i do that it gets to a blue screen that just display's my version of windows and the amount of memory iv also tried rebooting in the last know good configuration and that still didnt work..... iv checked the device manager in safe mode to see if theres any problems with the devices but there is no exclamation marks next to anything....Iv also tried unplugging all external hardware to see if that is the cause like speakers, modem, router etc and they didnt seem to affect it so must be something else
My computer setup is: 3.2GHz athlon 955 x 4, 4GB of DDR3 ram, Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P motherboard, 512MB ati radeon graphics card.
its just very strange considering my computer was working perfectly fine last night and i didnt install any new programs or anything.. please can you post a solution or a fix or if you had the same problem and how you fix i..... i use the computer ALOT and dont like going without it for too long so please can you help..... Any help would be greatly appreciated
ps: im not a very good computer person but ill try whatever you say just could you break it down into steps if its a bit technical.....

[colweb]

iv checked the device manager in safe mode to see if theres any problems with the devices but there is no exclamation marks next to anything..

Aha, so you can boot in safe mode!

Safe mode is according to Microsoft a mode where only the Microsoft drivers and software is loaded and nothing else.
If your computer is able to boot in this mode but not in normal mode, the following can be the case:

1. Through some automatic update function a driver doesn't work anymore
2. A virus that doesn't start in safe mode, but will start in normal mode prevents the normal startup

First thing you could (maybe should) try is running a virus scan while the computer is in safe mode. Second, remove the last installed software and or update(s). Third, try to boot again, keep your fingers crossed, pray and maybe it will start again normally.

Without a original Windows XP installation CDrom, it is hard but not impossible to get out of this situation.

[MH_Wadester]

Well i dont know if this throws the virus option out of the window but i ran avira, ad-aware and ccleaner for clearing of any malicious programs and came up with nothing just a warning and about the driver issue i didnt update any of my drivers before this happened so unless it automatically updated and i didnt know about it and windows didnt like it i dont know

[colweb]

Well i dont know if this throws the virus option out of the window but i ran avira, ad-aware and ccleaner for clearing of any malicious programs and came up with nothing just a warning and about the driver issue i didnt update any of my drivers before this happened so unless it automatically updated and i didnt know about it and windows didnt like it i dont know

If normal boot isn't blocked by a virus, it must be because of some program that doesn't work anymore and is told to start when Windows start. Microsoft itself has several pages online about your problem. I mean, you can boot in safe mode but not normal mode.
You can find Microsoft's solution here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316434 There are links on this page to other options you can try.
In my experience the best (and maybe only) way to solve this is to do a repair install over your existing XP, but you need an install CD for this.

[MH_Wadester]

hmm ok thanks....