While connecting a dvd drive to my machine I made the mistake of trying to connect the power cable to the drive the wrong way causing a spark. The machine shut down soon after. I pulled the power cord out and replaced it and rebooted which seemed to work but the machine gets as far as windows coming up then restarts back to BIOS again. this will continue on an on... any help will be appreciated....

 rico90210......when you say the power cable ...are you refering to the 4 pin PLUG ?  It is keyed so that it will only go in one way ...... Did you attempt this with the PC still running ? Where was this "SPARK" ?

let us know

dl65  Yes, The spark occurred at the 4 pin plug which was REVERSED. the machine was up and running..LIVE and learn... Can you start it with the dvd drive disconnected?The lesson here as PC Doc says is ALWAYS unplug the computer when WORKING inside the case!Yea learned the lesson...dvd disconnected has no effect.
cant rebuild OS cause doesn't come up far enough

I'm gonna try rebooting from the xp install cd..