last thing i ever did that could have an impact on anytihng was that i ran disk cleanup/defrag before i turnned off the computer for the night and next morning i got the blue screen with the message
STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0xF681C174, 0xF795DD44, 0xF795DA40)
but nothing follows after that then later i tried booting in last good known config but then i got the same error, i tried booting in safe mode as well but when i booted in safe mode i get into the login screen for like a couple of seconds before the computer restarts on itself so i dont know what i can do without reformatting or safe mode not even working properly. i cant even get past the login screen in safe mode

Hi,

Boot the computer and choose Command Prompt or DOS. Get to a c: and type dir /ah. If the windows root directory, boot.ini. command.com doesn't appear or you get an error message, then the master boot record is corrupt. You will need a boot floppy, or download one from www.bootdisk.com, boot from the floppy and at a command prompt type FIXMBR.

how do i do that without safe mode or not being able to pass the boot screen becasue i get the error after 3 and 1/2 cycles of the loading bar thing

You insert your XP cd and boot from it, run system restore (or recovery), A black screen wll apear that looks like dos. Follow the instructions for keyboard layout etc, then enter your administrator password when asked, once you get the dos prompt, type fixmbr and enter to restore the boot master record. Press Y when asked, it should say that it fixed it successfully and voila! Take out CD, cross fingers and restart.

Thats it.

Its not a good idea to run defrag on small or full or plain old disks. If critical data is moved to a bad sector of the drive, you may either damage files or even mess up your XP instalation, OR THE DISK ENTIRELY if blue screens appear while trying to re-install Windows.

is it possible to do it without a windows xp cd or is it required to have one in order to do this?

To do a system restore you need your XP cd. To fix the master boot record you need a boot floppy or recovery floppy.

why cant i get into c:\ it says invalid drive specification when i type cd C:\

anyone know how i can fix this?

Wierd, is your drive recognized on the BIOS? Is your drive on a HDD or RAID controller?

If you can see the XP boot up, then your drive is recognized but why not on system restore?

I donno then, please specify if the drive is on an HDD or RAID controller (SATA, SCSI or IDE. This is usually a PCI card. If you dont know what it is then the answer is probably NO

im on a RAID controller

Well that explains that... Ok. You need to load the driver for the RAID controller before running the system restore.

Look for the driver for the RAID controller. It is usually on a floppy. If you dont have it read the brand and model on the RAID controller boot up and get online to find the driver and create a driver floppy, most RAID drivers include a utility to automaticly create the driver disk.

Right after you boot from the XP CD, you will see the normal blue setup screen. Read the text on the bottom of the screen where it says to press F6 to specify a RAID controller driver. Do that. and load the correct driver off the floppy and that should work. Let me know what happens.