Good People:
Thank you all for your remarks and thoughts, I can provide a bit more info:
The machine was born as windows Me and I upgraded to XP about a year ago. XP was also carrying a lot of the original garbage that was under Me. About two weeks ago I ran cleaner with no problems.
The machine was very slow and sluggish but very stable. Last weekend I ran Issues, (making sure not to let it process file associations, something I highly reccomend to everyone running cleaner not to do, it has killed working file associations on every machine I've run it on).
If I try to boot from the HD it brings up the windows loading screen with the chasing light bar, it then flashes for about .5 seconds an error screen that looks similar to the one you get when you cut power without shutting down windows. I've tried every trick to hold it or print it with no luck. It then goes to the screen with
"boot in safe mode"
"boot in safe with network"
"boot in safe mode with driver selection" I forget the wording, the one that allows you to approve each driver being loaded, which does not work.
"last known good configuration"
"boot normally"
Each one does exactlly the same thing, the windows loading screen, then a blank screen, then I believe the CMOS puts up in the top right F2 for setup, F12 to choose a boot device.
If I boot from XP cd and I choose the repair console, aka the dos prompt, I do see a more advancd set of dos tools, help, chkdsk, fixboot, fdisk, etc-. I can also navigate the the hard drive and see all the files.
If I chose to install XP from the same XP disk (hoping it will leave the files like favorites, WAB and etc alone, a process I have done in the past) it claims that the drive is not formatted, "would I like to format it first"
If I put and good HD in the machine as the master and set the origional drive as a slave on the same IDE cable, boot it to XP, it again claims the drive is not formatted.
Ok, thanks again, got to get to work and look busy, may think of something more on the way.
Wade