i have a celeron 866 box that ran windows xp pro fine for 2+ years.
the day after i made my daughter's account administrator
& she had downloaded some music sharing software,
i noticed HD LED running non-stop.  i FORCED off power, rebooted.
SCREEN now comes up to a very dim win xp load screen
progress bar is dark, screen stays there as HD runs non-stop.

a friend tells me i should not have forced off power
windows might have been doing some sort of self-imposed defrag.

i tried booting from the microsoft WinXP_EN_PRO_BF.EXE
6 floppy set & a: drive runs, but machine never loads floppy.
floppy light turns off, dim win xp screen comes up & HD
LED is on constantly.

i have a new blank HD & oem win xp home to install.
is that the best solution?A Format and Reinstall is Likely the Easiest WAY to get back up and Running

Unless there any thing on the Computer you need to keep?

But i don't know why your Screen is Faded

The Reason the Boot floppies weren't working is Likely because you bios is not set to boot from Floppythank you panboy for your reply.

i'd like to keep the fouled HD to grab files from, yes.
same friend tells me the HD is hosed from some
infiltration & even as a slave drive it will infect system.
i had current updated norton 2006 on pc.

this celeron has a weird BIOS
i can F8 at celeron screen & CHOOSE boot device.
when i choose floppy, it seems to read floppy
but still comes up to dim win xp load screen,
progress bar blank.

only an 866mhz, trying to find my oem win98se disk here . . .Well form what i Hear Norton is Quite Often Regarded as the Worst Virus you can get.

If you Do Slave the Drive into some other computer, and your Worried about perhaps a Virus, just Run An AVG scan on it Before you try to copy any files off it.

In t the Case of the Floppies not booting in that situation , they might just be Bad, Try Booting for the XP or Win 98SE Cd's see if you have better luckthanks once more panboy
i'm downloading avg71free_394a763.exe now.
still can't find my win98se oem disk.
think i'll just try to load oem winxppro.
is that easy with a blank HD?
how would i format a blank drive?The XP install Wizard gives a Pretty Good Step By Step Process, just boot off the Disk and answer it's questions

It would be Safer for your old data in you remove the Old HDD so you can Accidentally Format it instead of the new one
the XP installer Partitions and Formats the Drive. no messy Fdisk Commands

Mostly Just use the install Default Options on it should be fine