Ok, I've donwloaded the WinXP setup disks and the don't seem to work at all.

I've gone in to bios, put the floppy as the first boot device and it just seems to read them forever. Making the same sounds over and over again.

I _really_ need a WinXP CD... If only I could run the repair!

Those errors that occur when trying to boot in to safe mode are all

yadda/yadda/yadda/yadda/driver/yadda

EDIT: Ok, now i've just put the boot floppy in and nothing. It read for a second, now it's just sitting there. This is getting weirder and weirder - Nothing at all on the PC has changed!

EDIT 2: Wtf...

Ok, I've just tried once more to use the XP boot floppies.

I get the following error:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v463/ ... C00062.jpg

Sorry for the crappy photo, on the left side, before all those 0000006 shit, it says "TRAP"

Googling suggests a lot of different things, Gonna run a Memtest. While I'm getting that I'm rebooting again - this time it is as before, it's just "reading" the floppy disk. Forever. I'll leave it a while and see what's going on.

Ok the mem test is running at it's on "Pass 22%" and we've hit an error

tst: 7
Pass: 0
Failing Address: 0002c98c7d4 - 713.7mb
Good: fb26d96b
bad: dd26d96b
err-bits: 04000000
count: 2
chan: (there's nothing written next to it)

So I'm not positive, because to be honest, I don't have a clue what that means, but it looks like the RAM might be causing the problem?

Mem test complete, that's the only error that turned up.

Pev is gonna go out on her break at work and grab a new stick for us to try swapping it out.

We'll still need to repair the XP installation I'm gathering.

I remember having a virus that caused my computer to bluescreen and restart all the time, have you checked on that (or can you check on that)?
Luckily i had 2 computers at the time and i could download and install a fix for it through the other one.

Other than that you'll probably want to wait untill somebody with actual computer knowledge posts a reply here.

that's insane. Though if you're an idiot you can pay more for CDRs than DVDrs. There's always those freaky companies that sell disks for way too much. I wonder why the price difference is so significant? Are you paying taxes to the entertainment industry for the right to buy recordable disks?

i've seen CDR's for as much as £25 for 15. making it over £1.60 (just short of $3.20) per CD.

that was once, in a high street store.

However, I try not to pay more than £15 per 100 (£0.15 or roughly $0.30 per CD)