Won't boot after ending svchost.exe process in Task Manager

Been a long time since I posted here fellas but it looks like I need your professional help once again...

Did a quick search and didn't find anything
(Flame suit on)

I made the boneheaded mistake of ending a process in the Windows Task Manager called svchost.exe. Immediately following, I noticed that my sound went dead. Naturally I tried to restart the computer and yep, you guessed it...now it won't boot.

It gets just about to the Windows boot screen and then a blue screen flickers on and it restarts over again. There is some writing at the top of the blue screen but it literally flickers for a split second making it ineligible.

From the brief searching I did on the net, it looks like this is what can happen when you eliminate the svchost process. I am not familiar with any sort of recovery process and the only disk I have is the Windows XP O/S install disk.
I have tried starting it in Safe Mode and (last known good configuration) with no avail.
The last thing I want to do is a new/clean install of XP, is there anyway to avoid this?

I promise to stay out of the Task Manager if I get this fixed

This sounds like a Windows Repair should do it for you.

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

Thanks for that link. Just printed the instructions and will try it when I get home tonight.

Just finished running a chkdsk /r and it ran for about 10 minutes. After restart, still nothing.
Also ran a windows repair install with the O/S disc that I used to install XP, still nothing.

The windows loading screen stays up a bit longer, but that's about it.
Still get a blue screen flash with some writing on it, but it flashes too quickly to determine what it says.

Two things:

a. Did you recently encounter any infections?

b. What is the make of your harddrive?

No infections and PC was running tops until I did this.
C: HD is a Western Digital 74GB 10K raptor from 2007
D: Storage Drive is a Seagate 500GB or something (personal stuff and all)

You may need to do a fresh install of your Os on C. Sounds like you may have shut a main service or program off. In the process you might have corrupted a few system files.