To make a long story short:
I ran a Windows repair from the Recovery Console using what I think is the original XP Installation CD, and got 36 errors of “Cannot Copy File”. The repair completed without these files and my system is back to a perpetual boot. I tried doing the repair again, but now I get a “Setup cannot find a previous version of Windows installed. …needs to verify you qualify to use this upgrade product”. When I backed out of it I got a “Windows XP is not completely set up. Are you sure you want to exit?”. I did exit as I was not sure if this was going to be a repair or it was going to reinstall. At this point, what is the proper curse of action for a second repair try?
My technical guy told me that the reason I got all of these errors is that there is something wrong with the hard drive and I have to reinstall Windows Clean and reformat the drive. Is this correct? I do have a backup of my entire C:drive on a removable hard drive. However, I have a professional radio software in there that cannot be copied over and I am unable to reinstall from scratch. What else can I do to fix Windows?