The boot process goes as far as just after the screen with the XP logo and the horizontal loading bar, then the screen goes black. At this point the computer hangs. It's not an issue of corrupt video drivers cuz i uninstalled them and tried to boot in VGA mode, and that didn't change a thing. I made an ERD a lil while back, but I don't have my Windows XP cd right now because one of my brothers borrowed it. Any suggestions would be great.

Did you try safe mode?

I'm currently in Safe Mode.

Have you try the windows provided Recovery?

so when and why did it happen ? what have you done ...

If you can load up in safe mode your in the perfect position too clean out drivers. Use the add remove for your mother board drivers and then run Driver Cleaner Pro. If all goes well hopefully you can start-up into windows and go through the re-activation process.

The question remains, what were you doing?

Sounds exactly like what happens when I load the (up until recently) broken Nforce SW/IDE drivers. It'll sit at the Windows logo boot screen and do nothing, but will boot into safe mode.

If you have a recent restore point set, I'd restore it in safe mode, or you might even be able to hit the F8 screen upon boot and select last known succesful boot configuration (or something to that effect).