WINxp will not start in any mode

[Andrew Bestfrenn]

I am cobbling together a system consisting of an 8 gig hd formatted with winxp,
a 750 K6 processor, asus a7 motherboard, 128 meg RAM

When I turn it on I get the following message:

--
We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start
successfully. A recent hardware or software change might
have caused this.
If startup was interrupted due to power failure, or because the power
or reset button was pressed, or if you are not sure what caused the
problem, choose Start Windows Normally (from the list below):

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Last Known Good Configuration
Start Windows Normally

---

None of the above listed options will work.
All thre Safe Mode options take me into a dead list of files and nothing happens.
Last Known Good Configuration takes me to a blank black screen and nothing
happens.
Start Windows Normally just freezes the screen in place and nothing happens.

If anyone has any idea what is going on, please post it here.

 

[Gerry Voras]

I'd start over with an fdisk and format. But first, get ahold of some
hardware test utilities (I prefer CheckIt, myself) and run an extensive
burn-in test 1st.

 

[Colon Terminus]

Boot from your XP CD.
When asked if you want to repair or install, choose install.
Windows will "discover" an existing installation and offer to "Repair"
Choose "Repair"

That should fix it.