Dave, just a thought... do you have system restore active?

I've pulled myself out of a couple of XP jams with this in the past.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/getstarted/ballew_03may19.mspx

Altatech Laserworks

Mike,

The system restore worked to resolve the same issue on my laptop, but an attempt at restore on the older machine failed.