Win2k Crashed....

[sKiT]

I have been trying to get even back to the administrator account and cant seem to successfully login to any account. I have tried Win2k Emergency repair disk and no-go. Gets me to the same point. Sometimes I can get a successful login but, as soon as I try to do anything even hitting the "windows" or "start" button it freezes up. I have replaced the RAM and thats not the problem. I have also stripped the system down to bare bones(all onboard peripherals Disabled & all ISA/PCI cards removed). I have reset the CMOS and set the BIOS for fail safe defaults as booting to last known good configuration did not work either to my surprise. I have re-seated the CPU although everything runs great while in DOS. The system only freezes right after network login. The machine has had an account on our LAN for at least a year now with no problems(Used everyday for UPS/FED-EX shipping) It was completely up to date(MS patches) as of around 4 days ago. The only things I suspect now are either the HDD which appears to be working fine as far as noises etc..... or the CPU or the Mainboard. My hunch says its in the OS somewhere and the hardware is fine. Am I forgetting anything really easy to try here? If its possible I would very much like to keep the content of this HDD. Hit me with what ya got!

EDIT:
I was able to boot with recovery console and did a fixbootsector but my knowledge there is small and would need a good point in some direction. The image does have Norton AV 2000 installed but I'm almost positive recovery disks were not made( I havent ruled out viruses) virusi?>>>dont know plural to virus

Just thought I would give you a part listing of what I'm dealing with:

AMD XP 1700+ No OC, BIOS reads 1100MHz(knocked FSB to 100MHz)
Soyo K7VEMPRO mainboard
WD 20GB 5400 rpm HDD
128MB KVR Valueram PC-133 at 100MHz
Win2K SP3

[sKiT]

I have basically just ruled out hardware as I just popped a new HDD in and then loaded a brand spankin new image of Win2K on it using all other mentioned hardware except the WD 20 Gig. The image is running great so basically I am locked out of my OS. Safe mode locks up when trying to boot into safe mode and when I do get to a desktop, As soon as I click any button............I get an hourglass and then it just sits there yet I can move the mouse Icon around but the rest of the system is frozen. I get the feeling I'm on my own on this one If ya ask me.......musta been a virus I might tomorrow slave my old image to my new one and see If I can get anything from it. Any opinions here?

[SeanC]

Have you done a full repair from the Windows CD? If you put that in your post, I apologize I didn't see it.

If the repair doesn't work, then I would suggest reinstalling the PC. Formatting the hard drive and installing from scratch.

Sean

[Telexen]

I would just throw the hard drive into another machine just to get a backup of anything you want...then format and reinstall your operating system

[sKiT]

thnx.....problem never solved. Work-around consisted of a format & re-install of the OS which was the last thing I wanted to do. Ohh well, lose some win some.