boot sector corrupt in WinXP

[Guest]

My computer running WinXP Home SP2 has a corrupt boot sector, I think, as it
freezes up while loading Windows. I've played around with it enough to know
it's not a memory problem, and I doubt it is not a hard drive problem.

What the problem is now though, is that I'm not sure how to go about booting
it. Through some bizarre mixup with my brother's things, the WinXP CD I have
is meant for WinXP Professional SP1 (my computer originally had WinXP Home-
no SP- installed). This might also explain why I wasn't able to boot from
the CD in the first place. After reading up about BartPE, do I need to use a
WinXP Home CD to make a disk I can boot with?

Also my computer apparently has two partitions on its hard drive, as part of
some kind of BIOS System Restore feature that uses the first partition, but I
don't know what that's about yet (reading up on it just now). Would the way
the hard drive is partitioned be problematic if I tried using a CD to boot
the computer?

 

[Guest]

Aaahh, I just found this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324764
which describes my exact problem, I just need to figure out how to boot and
disable the service that's causing me grief.

 

[Steve N.]

Aaahh, I just found this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324764
which describes my exact problem, I just need to figure out how to boot and
disable the service that's causing me grief.

Did you follow the directions in the article?

Steve