Hi Fernando 1, Many thanks for the prompt reply. I have an update: 1) I re-made an OS CD and included the sata_ide sub-folder as PnP as suggested and this enabled me to get to the install procedure after the license agreement page. 2) The system went into chkdsk and told me the "volume was dirty" and proceded to run chkdsk which reported that it was recovering orphaned files. These included files like system, sam, security etc. 3) Once chkdsk completed, the system then allowed me to enter setup mode. It tells me that it has already attempted an upgrade (done when I first had the problem) and so I allowed it to retry this repair. 4) This proceeds successfully and copies the files to the c: drive. 5) On re-boot, the Raid array is reported as healthy, I can enter its setup mode from the BIOS, the array is 0, helathy, stripe is reported etc. the black Windows Welcome screen then appears, then goes blank as normal prior to the blue WinXp logon screen, the keyboard is energised, the mouse pointer appears briefly but then the system goes into reset mode again and loops attempting to restart Windows. Based on this behaviour, is it possible that I have loaded the incorrect drivers when I made the OS disk or is it a just that the damage is such that the XP repair will not work? The drivers I integrated were downloaded from nVidia, the enclosed Readme file is as follows: This WinXP nForce (C55/MCP55) driver package consists of the following components: Ethernet Driver (v60.24) "WHQL" Network Management Tools (v60.26) SMBus Driver (v4.57) "WHQL" Installer (v5.17) WinXP IDE SataRAID Driver (v6.91) "WHQL" WinXP IDE SataIDE Driver (v6.91) "WHQL" WinXP RAIDTOOL Application (v6.91) "Sedona" I integrated the SataRAID (textmode) and the SataIDE drivers (PnP). I can boot the system to XP normally from the pata drive, will I get full details on the actual nForce chipset under System Information? Many thanks again for all your help, very much appreciated. Regards.