Ahh! Windows XP won't boot!

Factual Questions
1

I’ve used Windows XP for years, and more the most part it hasn’t given me any trouble. But last Sunday, I turned on my computer and found that it wouldn’t boot. It just froze. After trying a few times, I put in my Windows CD and tried to repair my installation. It got through the first couple of screens, and then I got an arror message saying that “lsass” could not be found. The computer would then restart, and do the same thing again if I let it.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I haven’t installed any hardware recently, and I can’t think of any software changes that might have caused this. My current install is Service Pack 2, and the disk is is an old OEM disk from Dell.

I currently have the old OEM version installed on an old hard drive which I’ve installed as the master, and the main HD is installed as a slave. I’d keep things like this, except the old drive is tiny (2 gigs) and I run out of room if I try to install the Service Pack. Any ideas as to how I can un-hose the main HD? I was thinking of buying Vista, but I was hoping I could put that off for a few months. If I can’t get this straightened out, however, I’ll probably just bite the bullet and buy Vista and a new hard drive.

2

Does it consistently fail at that point? Can you boot to a command prompt? How much space do you have left on C:?

BTW you don’t have to install XP on C:. Certain key files have to go there, but XP will be quite happy with the bulk of it sitting on another drive. Many years ago, with NT it was a common practice to split the drive into a small C: and a large D:, format C: as FAT and put a copy of the CD there, plus drivers, utilities etc, and then install NT on D:. This way you could boot off a DOS floppy and rerun setup quite easily.

3

It sounds like there has been severe data damage. I’d quit trying to re-install and attach it as a slave and pull off any critical data files.