dtkenmo

Yep, I think you're right... fortunately, all that's hosed is the Windows installation... all the user data etc. is intact. A bit more work but salvageable... Lessons learned include: Don't disable default devices. Learn to use the recovery console and other tools. ...and above all, don't mess with things you don't understand.

System is an ECS L7VMM3 all-in-one with: Duron 1300 256MB PC133 80GB Maxtor LG 52x32x52 CDR/W In trying to solve a problem with the display driver, I thoughtlessly disabled the vgasave driver via the disable button in the display properties dialog, thinking maybe it would force detection of the on-board video. So of course, after a reboot, Windows hangs on a black screen. Same in Safe Mode, too. So instead of doing the sensible thing and going back to the last known good configuration, or using my ERD2002 to enable the driver again, I attempted a repair install... several times. Then I tried going back to the last known good configuration... Everything I did seemed to make things worse... I was getting frantic: this was a client's system. A day of furious painting into a corner that would have been better spent in bed Now I get to a (PE) screen in VGA mode with the phrase: "Setup is being restarted.............." ...which does not change. There's a lot of hard disk activity, the XP CD (slipstreamed SP2) is accessed, data is transferred for a short while, then more hard disk activity. Finally things quiet down and the only thing that does anthing else is hitting [Esc] which produces another 20 seconds or so of HD activity. Then nothing... Pressing [Esc] causes some more HD activity and then that stops & nothing I do causes more activity but the system is not locked up. I suspect that on the screen I ought to be seeing, there's a dialog waiting for me to input something like maybe the License Key or something... Attempting to boot into Safe Mode yields a similar scenario except it stops on the initial boot options screen after the progress bar completes but without even displaying the drivers being loaded although there is disk activity for 30 seconds or so. I've run chkdsk from the reciovery console & rebuilt boot.ini... I'd really like to avoid having to wipe it all out & start over, but I'm all out of ideas Anybody have any? TIA