Black screen after Windows XP logo?

[MyF355Spider]

Hi all,
Please help me troubleshoot this problem.

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
AMD Athlon 3200+
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 Ram (Dual Channel)
Maxtor SATA 120GB
ATI Radeon 9600Pro 256MB w/ TV out
Samsung DVD
NEC DVD-RW
Logitech MX700 and wireless keyboard
SuperFlower 430W PSU

I've been getting a lot of BSOD's lately, and haven't had much time to figure it out, been using my laptop instead. I tried dusting everything off about 3 weeks ago, but that didn't change any of the BSOD's (mainly IRQL's not equal). The computer sat for 10 days, and when I tried to turn it on last night, it loaded everything normally, but as soon as you get past the XP logo/loading screen, it goes black and won't load the desktop. I can't get it to start in Safe Mode or Enable VGA mode.

A few times in the past, when I've had bootup problems, moving the memory around or only running one stick has helped, but not always. I'm running MemTest right now to see if it picks up anything...

I took my Hard Drive down to another working PC and it has the same symptoms (no go past Windows logo), so that leads me to believe it is a HD problem, unless I didn't get the BIOS set right.

I can't seem to find my XP CD, and so I tried to create bootable floppies downloaded from Microsoft to do a repair to the XP install, but on disk 3 it says "The file pci.sys is corrupted", and it won't let me continue with the install/repair...

I really need to get to the files on my HD today, so what options do I have?

I tried to run the working PC (with a 160GB Ultra ATA Seagate HD w/ W98) along with the SATA Maxtor, but while I finally got it to boot, the SATA drive was inaccessible through My Computer and Windows 98. During boot, it did recognize the presence of the drive, though..

Sorry this is so long, but I've spent several hours on this and have reached no good conclusions as to what's wrong, or at least how I can pull stuff off the HD, so maybe I would do a fresh XP install if I can obtain a disk from a friend...
Thanks
Steven

UPDATE: MemTest has completed one cycle (~28 minutes) and found NO errors...

 

[talldude123]

Looks like it's about time for an XP repair:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[MyF355Spider]

I started trying to do that, but I have no XP CD and like I said the floppies won't work for some strange reason...

 

[Alvin.C]

Re:

Hello,

If you need to get to your files, then back them up by slaving the hard drive in your other machine.

You'll need the free space, however.

 

[MyF355Spider]

I've got the free space on the Seagate that runs 98SE, but I can't get the SATA drive to slave when that HD is the boot HD. How do I get the info, here's what I've got available:
Working P4 2.2Ghz w/ Mobo w/ SATA connectors and IDE Seagate 160GB HD running 98SE - Won't recognize this HD and my Maxtor SATA @ same time and can't boot off of Maxtor (corrupt)
Working A7N8X-E Deluxe setup described above, but corrupt XP Pro installed on the Maxtor HD
Dell w/ 40GB Maxtor IDE HD, but no SATA slots...
The Dell's HD won't work with the other MB's that have SATA, so I'm stuck...
A friend is going to bail me out tomorrow, but I'm sure there's a way to do this with the items I have available...
I've also got an iBook G4 1.33 12", but I dont' think that'll do any good....
Cheers,
Steven