i am brand new to this site
this is my rents comp, and of course im asked to fix it when its completly screwed
it religously locks up on the boot screen and just sits there, so i run it in safe mode and run the virus scan and of course theres a couple nice viruses. so i clean them up and reboot it in normal mode, and it does the same thing. so i reformat windows. everything is going smooth. then when i go to pop in some driver disks the tool bar vanishes and it locks up and nothing is responding! so i hit restart, but it locks up right at the boot screen again. wtf now?
remember im not that involved in this stuff so dumb it down plz
thanks guys

Boot into Safe Mode and then do a System Restore to a date before this happened; also post a HijackThis log file in case there is something bad running on your system here:
http://www.suggestafix.com/index.php?showforum=15
A tutorial on how to use HijackThis can be found here:
http://www.suggestafix.com/index.php?showtopic=16053

ok but the prob is it wont even boot up in safe mode

You mentioned in your first post that you were able to boot into Safe Mode, but since it's not working now then you can try the "Last Known Good Configurations" option, and if that doesn't work then try a repair install of Windows. You don’t have any important data on that machine by any chance?

ok none of that worked, its still doin the same thing

and no, i dont have anything i cant afford to lose

Download memtest from here:
http://www.memtest86.com/download.html
Let it run on your system for a few hours to eliminate memory as a possible cause for the problem.

Might try !!

Over the Top repair Install:

Insert your XP CD into your CD drive and restart your computer.

When the "Press any key to boot from CD" message is displayed on your screen, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD.

When you see the following message displayed on the Welcome to Setup screen, press ENTER:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

At this point an option to press R to enter the Recovery Console is displayed.
DO NOT SELECT this option.

On the Windows XP Licensing Agreement screen, press F8 to agree to the license agreement.

Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP is selected in the box, and then press the R key to repair Windows XP, Follow the menu on the screen to complete Setup.

ok i finally got this thing up and running. but now its crazy slow. if i multitask it locks up constantly and if i give it enough time it will come back to being usable. the cpu and ram usage are hardly being used but the HD light is always on when it freezes. its been totally reformated and all virus and spyware tests come up clean, also all the window updates are installed. suggestions?

It looks like something is running in the background that is causing this slowness; download CCleaner from here:
http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
Install it and then run it; also defrag your hard drive, and then post a HijackThis log as I mentioned above to make sure that your system is clean. You can also use msconfig to see what processes are running on your system, as one of them may be causing this issue.

Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.2
Scan saved at 7:48:11 PM, on 8/21/2008
Platform: Windows XP SP3 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 SP3 (6.00.2900.5512)
Boot mode: Normal

Running processes:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\spoolsv.exe
C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
C:\Program Files\Analog Devices\SoundMAX\SMax4PNP.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\AVG\AVG8\avgtray.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\hkcmd.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\igfxpers.exe
C:\Program Files\AIM6\aim6.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\AVG\AVG8\avgwdsvc.exe
C:\Program Files\Viewpoint\Common\ViewpointService.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\AOL\Loader\aolload.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\AVG\AVG8\avgrsx.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\AVG\AVG8\avgemc.exe
C:\Program Files\AIM6\aolsoftware.exe
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuauclt.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\mmc.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\DfrgNtfs.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\DfrgNtfs.exe
C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\HijackThis\HijackThis.exe

R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://www.comcast.net/
O2 - BHO: WormRadar.com IESiteBlocker.NavFilter - {3CA2F312-6F6E-4B53-A66E-4E65E497C8C0} - C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8\avgssie.dll
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SoundMAXPnP] C:\Program Files\Analog Devices\SoundMAX\SMax4PNP.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AVG8_TRAY] C:\PROGRA~1\AVG\AVG8\avgtray.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [igfxtray] C:\WINDOWS\system32\igfxtray.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [igfxhkcmd] C:\WINDOWS\system32\hkcmd.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [igfxpers] C:\WINDOWS\system32\igfxpers.exe
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [Aim6] "C:\Program Files\AIM6\aim6.exe" /d locale=en-US ee://aol/imApp
O9 - Extra button: (no name) - {e2e2dd38-d088-4134-82b7-f2ba38496583} - C:\WINDOWS\Network Diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: @xpsp3res.dll,-20001 - {e2e2dd38-d088-4134-82b7-f2ba38496583} - C:\WINDOWS\Network Diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe
O9 - Extra button: Messenger - {FB5F1910-F110-11d2-BB9E-00C04F795683} - C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Windows Messenger - {FB5F1910-F110-11d2-BB9E-00C04F795683} - C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe
O16 - DPF: {6414512B-B978-451D-A0D8-FCFDF33E833C} (WUWebControl Class) - http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/...b?1219349119015
O18 - Protocol: linkscanner - {F274614C-63F8-47D5-A4D1-FBDDE494F8D1} - C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8\avgpp.dll
O20 - AppInit_DLLs: avgrsstx.dll
O23 - Service: AVG Free8 E-mail Scanner (avg8emc) - AVG Technologies CZ, s.r.o. - C:\PROGRA~1\AVG\AVG8\avgemc.exe
O23 - Service: AVG Free8 WatchDog (avg8wd) - AVG Technologies CZ, s.r.o. - C:\PROGRA~1\AVG\AVG8\avgwdsvc.exe
O23 - Service: Viewpoint Manager Service - Viewpoint Corporation - C:\Program Files\Viewpoint\Common\ViewpointService.exe

--
End of file - 2982 bytes

Can you post your log here so that someone can take a look at it:
http://www.suggestafix.com/index.php?showforum=15

Defragging is running, and I don't know why it would run all the time. But it is possible that it could cause the problems that you are experiencing.

C:\WINDOWS\system32\DfrgNtfs.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\DfrgNtfs.exe

Try two things:
>Check to see if Indexing Service is set to "Manual" -- if it is, disable it.
>Go into Run / MSCONFIG/ and disable DfrgNtfs.exe
>If those don't do it, enter Safe Mode and change the file designation from .exe to .old

See if that helps.