Hi Jim. I would try the following.

First, before anything happens, take both of the drives out of the computer, then put one of them as a slave drive in another computer, and copy off any valuable data.

Second, download the Ultimate Boot CD, this will allow you to troubleshoot your system components. http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ ,then burn the ISO to a CD.

1) While the case is open, book for anything unusual on the motherboard and expansion cards. Any scorching, a funny smell, swollen and leak capactitors. If anything is scorched, then your power supply might have fried it. Replace the power supply and then scorched ccomponent. If nothing is amiss, then remove each expansion card. Blow any dust off of the gold fingers, remove any corrosion with an eraser (gently), then blow dust out of the slots. Unhook each power cable, check for dust or corrsion then reconnect it. As you did already, remove the RAM, check for corrsion on the fingers, blow dust out of slots, then reseat. Blow dust out of the CPU cooling fins and fan. Check to see that the fan rotates easily and smoothly. Connect the power and see if the system now boots to with the CD. If it doesn't then keep removing expansion cards until it does boot from the CD. You should be able to get down to just a video card. If it still doesn't boot, then grab a spare video and replace it and see if it boots.

If you can boot from the cd, you will see a menu system, test a few components to see which is failing.
2) CPU: From the main menu select "main board tools" then "CPU burn in". Run this for several minutes to several hours and see if the computer reboots or the program reports an error. If no problems, then the CPU is fine, move onto next test

3) Memory: From the main menu select "amin board tools" then any one of the memory tests. As above, let run for a few minutes to a few hours

4) Hard drive: this is going to be difficult to test since you have a RAID. I would recommend testing each drive seperately. Hook first one into primary IDE controller, then boot from the Ultimate Boot CD, then select "Hard Disk Tools", then select "HDD Salvation". This will check for bad sectors on the drive. Repeats with 2nd drive. If bad sectors then buy a new drive, if not then onto next step.

5) Hook up the drives back to the RAID controller and boot from them. If system still doesn't work, it seems that it could be file system corruption and not a hardware problem. If that is the case try to Windows XP repair install. To do this boot follow the instructions at this link
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#RI
Essentially this option copies over your Windows files on the hard drive from the files on the CD. IE it will fix any OS files that are corrupted, without (hopefully) deleting any data or installed programs.

6) If that didn't work, try a fresh install. During the install deleted all of the partitions, format them, then do a clean install. You will have to reinstall all of your programs and copy your data back on.

7) If that doesn't work, then the RAID controller could be flakey. Remove the drives from the RAID, and install 1 as your primary drive, then repeat step 6.

If at this point the system still doesn't work, then you will either have to start buying some components (CPU, motherboard, RAM, video card, hard drive...) and swapping the parts out until the system works. Or the cheaper option is to let your computer store do this for you.


>The following on Win XP (pro) SP2 up-to-date.
>I was working with probably a dozen applications open and all was fine.
>I went and tired to do a SnagIt capture (had done many earlier) and the application 'froze', though other applications were still accessible and seemed to be working.
>
>I got to where I needed the capture that was frozen, so I decided to "End task" on SnagIt. There were 2 of them running - the base program and the (attempted) capture.
>Neither would stop, though eventually they seemed to.
>Trying to restart SnagIt didn't do anything. I'd click it in the Programs list but nothing started.
>
>So I decided to shutdown (restart) figuring that a reboot would solve all.
>However, no matter how many times I clicked on Shutdown (which did produce the dialogue each time and the screen did do its greying thing) and then either "Restart" or 'power off', nothing happened. So I ultimately hit ctrl+alt+delete several times, waited a few minutes, then powered off.
>
>When I powered on a message was displayed that Windows has trouble last shutdown and asked me what I wished to do. I first tried 'start normally' and the Windows logo screen appeared momentarily, then a self-reboot.
>Then tried 'safe mode with networking'. This time a long list of module names was displayed on the screen (probably hundreds) but then that stopped and another self-reboot.
>Same thing after specifying "Safe mode".
>
>I tried remove RAM, even though POST was OK, but no joy.
>
>The system has a RAID1 (mirroring) C: drive, if that matters. I'd remove a drive one at a time if I knew how.