Weirdest boot problem I've ever seen

[Guest]

I was playing a game on my xp system when the game stopped responding. So I
said to my self, "Self, I'll just do a cold restart." held the button, shut
down, powered back on. My XP boot, SP 2, got up to the loading screen, and
decided to hang. It'll stay there forever if I let it. Tried Last Good
Config, same problem. So I tried to get into safe mode to msconfig. It got
up to the login screen with a password prompt, waits two seconds (I counted
them both), and restarts. Can't boot into XP. Can still boot into Vista
(dual -boot) but this is less than ideal, since Vista doesn't support my MIDI
device, and, consequently, I have no sound in Vista. (sound worked fine in
XP, unrelated issues). Already chkdsk-ed (past tense of the verb "to
chkdsk", not a switch) and fixboot-ed (Then had to reinstall Vista to get my
dual-boot functional again). Before you ask, AMD Athlon 64 FX-55, OC'd to
2.91GHz, 2 gigs Patriot ram. ATI Radeon x1650, ASUS A8R-MVP Deluxe mobo,
550-watt Antec PS. So, what do you guys think? Boot sector virus?
Regular-type malware? Corrupted startup files? Bad msconfig settings? I
really need some help, I'm completely stumped. Reinstall is my last resort,
since my data is spread across my hard drive, and would be very difficult to
replace. Most of my data, fortunately, is on my SATA RAID array. Windows XP
and Vista are on the same IDE drive. Help!

 

[Elmo]

I was playing a game on my xp system when the game stopped responding. So I
said to my self, "Self, I'll just do a cold restart." held the button, shut
down, powered back on. My XP boot, SP 2, got up to the loading screen, and
decided to hang. It'll stay there forever if I let it. Tried Last Good
Config, same problem. So I tried to get into safe mode to msconfig. It got
up to the login screen with a password prompt, waits two seconds (I counted
them both), and restarts. Can't boot into XP. Can still boot into Vista
(dual -boot) but this is less than ideal, since Vista doesn't support my MIDI
device, and, consequently, I have no sound in Vista. (sound worked fine in
XP, unrelated issues). Already chkdsk-ed (past tense of the verb "to
chkdsk", not a switch) and fixboot-ed (Then had to reinstall Vista to get my
dual-boot functional again). Before you ask, AMD Athlon 64 FX-55, OC'd to
2.91GHz, 2 gigs Patriot ram. ATI Radeon x1650, ASUS A8R-MVP Deluxe mobo,
550-watt Antec PS. So, what do you guys think? Boot sector virus?
Regular-type malware? Corrupted startup files? Bad msconfig settings? I
really need some help, I'm completely stumped. Reinstall is my last resort,
since my data is spread across my hard drive, and would be very difficult to
replace. Most of my data, fortunately, is on my SATA RAID array. Windows XP
and Vista are on the same IDE drive. Help!

Could be a bad graphics card..

 

[Guest]

Card works fine in Vista. why would it support that and not XP?
I'm almost positive it's a software problem.
About 92% sure.

 

[Elmo]

Card works fine in Vista. why would it support that and not XP?
I'm almost positive it's a software problem.
About 92% sure.

OK, I missed that fact.