Shoutbox

Thanks for all your help however im still experiencing the problem.
I ran the chkdsk and it found a problem or two apparently and then run at startup so i assume it fixed it. but this hasnt made a difference. The freezes i am getting arent like normal with a program crashing. you cant ctrl+alt+del or anything like that. the mouse just stops and the computer is unresponsive until you are forced to turn it off.
I thought about installing home edition and then putting my professional back on over the top however when i tried it and put the pro disk in it said the version on the disk is older than the one installed and if i really wish to go back to that version i have to boot from that cd. which brings me back to my original problem of not being able to boot from the xp pro disk (refer to 1st post).
Thanks everyone for helping with this its getting very frustrating and i have already lost work and been stopped in the middle of things because of these random lock ups.
If anyone has any ideas at all please share.