actually, just to clarify, I dont even have the heading display adaptors, which I thought should be there?

Have you tried the Device Manager VIA Safe Mode?

I'll give safe mode a go ad see what happens

Went in via safe mode, all still the same. After mucking around some more I tried a repair install of xp and got a message telling me it cant repair. I didnt get a chance to write down the exact message 'cos it disappeared before I had time to. Anyway i've decided to reinstall xp again, so now I have two running on my system but I can't start the original one which has a lot of info I need. How do I get the info on the 1st one over to the 2nd one? some I can open by going into C/D drives and getting access but others wont allow me? Might be simple but i've never had to do this before! By the way the graphics card now works in op-system 2!

What errors do you get accessing files?

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

As to booting here is an idea:

Right click the My Computer desktop icon, then left click
Properties. When the System Properties dialog box opens click the Advanced
tab, then under the heading: Startup and Recovery click the Settings button.
At the top of the Startup and Recovery dialog box you'll see all that you
need to easily make those changes, and there's also an EDIT button if you
want to edit the boot.ini file manually.