Thank you all for your help and good wishes. I'll chat to the monster in his lair but it will have to be tomorrow because today is all booked. I'll let you know.

Hmmm. No answer to my request for a chat but I was invited to fill in a box with a message. Let's hope they come back to me.

I got what seemed like very detailed instructions for how to "recover" a functional XP. "Do this and you'll see that then select this and....." but nothing worked out as their chap said it would. I got different messages on screen and different menus etc. I tried my best to follow steps which most closely resembled what I was told would appear but, no.

This was in response to my short message, sent once their chat failed. I had hoped for an e-mail asking me for more information than would fit into their initial little box so that I could tell them exactly what kit and XP I had, in the hope that it would help.

Once I had tried all of their suggestions I replied to their e-mail with details of what had happened and with all of the information that I thought would be useful but the mail failed because that address didn't accept replies.... That was helpful!

I will have to try to find something else. I certainly would prefer to achieve success through some sort of recovery process because then I wouldn't lose everything on my HDD and have to start again from the very beginning, which I believe would be necessary if I completely reinstalled XP. In addition I don't really want issues with WGA.

Howdy Cameronian,

Sorry to hear about the Acer not getting you very far.

Depends what you're after keeping. If you just want the user data then there are ways and means to back that up. But if you want all the software to be there, then it would be a case of reinstalling (or imaging, but not sure that would be advisable in your case given the state of the source image). Personally I wouldn't view it as such a bad thing, a fresh start could be the cloud with a silver lining.

I believe the Indians are generally pretty relaxed and helpful, but then I haven't had much direct experience of WGA "issues" because the only times I've had to re-install Windows on computers myself it has been with the use of one form or another of volume licensing key or retail boxed copies, which are a different kettle of fish.

Mike-Bracknell has more direct experience spending hours of his life helping home users, so he'll probably be the man to ask about WGA "issues". :E

It sounds to me like you need to put your existing HDD to one side, get another HDD, install it into your PC, then put an OS onto it (you might have to buy that - 2nd hand on ebay?), then add your existing HDD as a 2nd (data) drive, either externally (via a USB caddy or cheap USB - IDE connector) or internally, assuming that you have the wherewithal to do so (space, power, IDE cable, etc.).

That way you don't lose your data, but can access your PC.

SD

With XP you won't get WGA issues as long as you're using a genuine key. It's from Vista onwards that you get activation 'issues'.

Well goodness me, gentlemen. It wasn't what any of you said wot done it (and even less what ASUS contributed) but rather that you kept saying something which kept me trying.

I had gone through safe mode on several occasions to command a return to different restore points - one of them in 2010, fully five months before the upset - all to no avail. I had tried reconfiguring to the last functional setup on two occasions, again to no avail. I had clicked on every hopeful looking bookmark for online help sites and scoured them for promising advice, but without success.

Then a couple of hours ago one of those help sites said "go to a restore point using this link". I gloomily did so and got completely different dialogue boxes displayed from what I had seen on previous attempts so I kept going. I picked a restore point at the end of February 2011 - and I'm convinced that I had tried that very point before - and it worked! I had a couple of hiccups which required reboots but I've got there! :)

Thank you all again!

PS I still have one issue unresolved on this newer machine but I tried you all on that about a year ago so I'll give you all a bit more of a rest before I bring it up again.......

I knew it! I spoke just a little too soon....

Now the screen goes black repeatedly for only a second or two before coming back perfectly. It seems to do it more frequently if I'm pressing keys ore moving the mouse. Then an error message appeared - "The application or DLL C:\WINDOWS\System32\script.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette"

I don't have an installation diskette!

Actually, I don't even understand!

FIXED! I must be picking up something from you stars!

^^^^ THIS, except you'll be able to harvest the OEM license key using the keyfinder now you've managed to boot into it. *Please* stop trying the futile task of repairing a broken PC when you don't know (and will never know) fully why it's broken. Honestly, cut your losses and get a new hard drive and reinstall. You'll then be working from a known-good configuration and will have confidence in the PC's ability to actually DO the tasks it's asked to do.

(I don't think any of us "stars" would normally try and dissuade you from doing something genuinely productive if we thought you'd learn from it....but one of the first things you learn as an IT guru is when to give up and reimage the PC).

Mike's unfortunatley hit the nail on the head here.

The problem with Windows in particular as an OS to fix is that it's such an intertwined rabbit warren. It's why the forensics guys love it.... :E

Probably the greatest warren of all is the registry. If something's gone awry in your registry then you've pretty much had it. And there's no real way to tell if a registry is healthy because some of the symptoms displayed could be related to something altogether unrelated.

As Mike said, it's certainly in everyone's interest to ensure IT knowledge is passed on down the line of experience. The problem here is it is difficult to define exactly what experience needs to be passed on.

Anyway, having said that, it sounds like your restore point seems to be working out. Although it is worth remembering for the future is that they can be a double-edged sword, I generally see them as more of a last resort, which I guess applies to your present scenario !

I'm sure I'll probably now have a dream tonight about you coming back here to haunt us saying you've reached the end of your year long saga with a perfectly working computer in hand !

Well, it seems to work fine now - just as before, as one might expect. I shall take some time away from it (it's only destined for backup, after all). When I revisit it I shall first make an effort to review what I want to keep - probably less than one might think, I expect - and what I shall need for the backup function for two or three other computers in the house. Then I shall develop a plan,,,,,

Thank you all, yet one more time!