Help! WinXP Pro boot failure

[Basilisk]

A long-running household computer won't boot: something on the disk became corrupted, although the last shut-down was uneventful. I swapped *all* hardware save the disks, IDE cable and power cord. [Yes EVERYTHING, m/b, proc', etc.] Regardless of the parts, it crashes in exactly the same manner: it looks like a fine boot until it throws some noise on the monitor and self-reboots just before it should be putting up the login page.

Can't boot to admin/diagnostics level -- same failure. Logging doesn't show anything strange. Telling it to use the previous successful version doesn't work.

All I can think to do are (1) boot from CD and look for some restore[?] option, or (2) put the disks on another XP pro computer and run diagnostics there.

(1) Of course, I can't find where I left my @#$%^ iridescent master XP pro disk. 'Have looked throughout my house and my girlfriend's where I've used it -- surprisingly even with legitimate PKeys! Even if I found it, it was SP1 at best. 'Can't find a torrent of XP pro SP2 English -- one's listed, but withdrawn. I -do- have my master copy of XP *home* SP2... but I doubt that would be sane or even work on the Pro system.

(2) Other than doing a disk-check, I'm unsure what I can usefully do with the system's disks mounted on another XP pro system. 'Guess I'll do that, but I was wondering if there's a better Plan.

Thanks for any insights on this!

Edit: Since the above, I've put the HD in a working system and run diagnostics on the disk. Nothing was gained by this.

 

[QueBert]

here is what I would do.

0. run memtest 86 on the system, bad memory can cause problems such as this.
1. find your XP disc
2. copy it to a temp directory on your HD
3. download the sp2 standalone EXE
4. slipstream it into the XP in your temp directory
5. burn a bootable CD in Nero
6. reboot with disc, do a repair install - not the first repair option as that'll just take you to a prompt where you can do CLI stuff like copy files, or do something if you know exactly what the problem is

I have done a ton of XP repair installs on my box, enough times to where I have my product key memorized

It's 3:40AM and I'm 1/2 asleep, so sorry I didn't put up any links on how to slipstream, but google has all the info you need. And everyone should have a XP disc with the SP2 slipstreamed into it, nothing more frustrating then trying to do a repair install of XP only to be told "this computer has a newer service pack on it and windows can't be installed" very frustrating!