yep. time for a rescue disk and a restore or wipe clean. just went through it. but i installed a totally new updated xp instead. blackxp v30, and it's nice. about 2hrs to format and install. fortunately i also have a bootable xp cd to rescue my files before the big loss. as long as it starts to boot, your hd's probably fine, just some system files have become corrupted. start with a non destructive restore first, and you may be able to save any files stored. registered programs will go bad due to registry loss.