recently my computer had a corrupt windows file and so i formatted to reinstalled windows. it formatted fine and i installed windows again, but now it doesnt start up at all, it flashes "invalid" something (goes by too fast to read it all) and reboots, happens every time just after the whole "F8 to setup" dialog thing. is it possible my hard drive is just fried or could there be something else causing it?

invalid... wat?
cant say anything at this point
press F1 to pause the boot-up and note down the message.

it says invalid boot.ini, but it was after the initial bootup. it has the one line at the top flashing like it wants me to type something in, and says that for a fraction of a second. under the invalid boot.ini it says booting from c: but i cant tell where from

if you reformatted from scratch and it still won't boot, your hard drive has issues, unless you are missing a driver. I assume your drive is PATA not SATA.

next time post in the correct forum.

i dunno... this is wat my boot.ini says...
.
[boot loader]
timeout=2
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
.
try typing something from there like:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
.
lol... well, since no one has suggestion, use this one... i'm not so sure about it myself.

Tedster is giving you the correct advice - please check the drive before doing anything else.