terryJones,
I saw:
It used to be 'F8' in '98se.
And for some reason thought you were running Win98SE.
Since you are running WinXP, I would take the WinXP CD and use is to do a repair of your OS. This should not take more that 30 minutes to run and will give you a better than 50% chance of reviving your system.
(When running the WinXP CD, do not hit "R" in Recovery Console, go to the next screen where you hit "R" which is System Repair.)
Take Care,
Richard