At this point, i have answered all the questions i have been asked? am i missing one? I'm not rrying to be difficult here.
What you need to understand is that it is very difficult to troubleshoot a system without having "hands on". dai's experience here is legendary. Kalim is one of the most technically gifted people I have ever "met" as are Tumbleweed and GeekGirl. I haven't looked at who else is involved here, but the point is there's a group of very-skilled people trying to help. For myself, personally, I think I am a bit of a "hack", but believe that even I could have had this problem solved long ago if I had the ability to sit in front of the machine, mess with it, get data/information, make analysis and continue to mess with it.
We all understand you have limits, that's why you are here asking for help. But even within those limits you could certainly be doing more. Kalim said it & I backed him up.
Are we both wrong ?
The "more" you could be doing is paying very close attention to everything everyone is saying. No one expects blind acceptance of all suggestions from anyone that makes them, but certainly anything that even resembles a question should be responded to, directly. Like this:
We'd also like to hear your system specs. Do you know them at all?
Answer.
Do you have a spare HD with a Windows installed that you can add on as Master?
Answer.
Can you boot into the Recovery Console through the WinXP CD?
Answer.
Was this system ever working with WinXP?
Answer.
Were there any problems with it?
Answer.
Did you recently install/uninstall some software/hardware that you can recall just prior to this error?
Answer.
Have you upgraded from Win95 to WinXP?
Answer.
If so, is it of recent or old?
Answer.
Did the hard-drive ever have Win95 on it?
Answer.
If so, is it of recent or old?
Answer.
Did the hard-drive ever have Win95 on it?
Answer.
This is what the responses from a motivated User interested in helping themself to help others to solve their problem looks like.
Anything (significantly) less than that looks like a User that wants the problem to be "magically" solved without having to put out much effort, which is the very definition of what I have termed "difficult".
