it says "Please insert automated system floppy disk and press enter"

I'm assuming it's something I can make from inside windows.....
like the old dos start up disks.
when I get back into windows, I will search and find out.

As described here:

Clean Install of Windows XP

You can make the 6 floppy XP setup from here:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

This is the first step of the XP setup intended for use when for some reason your CD wont boot. After the 6 floppies initiate setup you then insert your CD to complete installation.

The problem here is that you have an OEM install & therefore it has its' own rhyme & reason on how to Restore Itself.

I would check with your OEM as to the nature of the recovery process & about this mysterious Floppy.

ok, downloaded a copy of knoppix, amazing how fast it starts and can go straight to the internet-- no config or nothing! (I am curious how to run, or if you can, windows programs and/or games (world of warcraft))
I found all my data I needed, it's still there, figured out how to get it to cd-r.
made the 6 disk floppy set, used those, and it booted into the f8 menu where I chose safe mode with networking and it hung on mup.sys. did a google on that(from my other computer-- I feel sorry for people with only one, what a nightmare!) and read at least 15 totally different "fixes" for this situation (how can there be so many different problems related to one file??)everything started to go, but after the black splash screen with the windows xp flag and progress bar, the display turns off and nothing happens. I either have to hold in the power button to turn it off or hit the reset button and do it again.
I am guessing this is a video situation-- I got into the bios and loaded optimized settings, then booted to f8 and chose directory services restore, it did some stuff in a dos window and said "volume clean" and restarted.
still after the xp splash screen, video shuts off (you can see the little ball of light in the center of the monitor go off and fade out, and the power led on the monitor goes from green to orange).
hit the reset button again, f8, went to vga mode this time, and voila!!!!!
got in, but only some of the icons are visible, but all the text is there.
the screen is set to 640x480 32 bit, er, scratch that, I just rechecked it and now the icons are there and it's on 1024x768 16bit-- wtf?? how can it change all by itself???
this is nuts.
I'm going to go see if there's new drivers for the video card, download those, install, and restart and see if everything works.
I will post again with results.

installed new ati 9600 drivers, but left it at 16 bit color-- I'm afraid to change it to 32. they've been playing warcraft for 2 days now, and no other problems so far. don't know exactly what the problem was, but sure was a bunch of crap to go through, I'm not interested in doing it again....
I found a lot of posts on other sites that have to do with problems with xpsp2, so I have chosen not to install sp2, and see if things will stay ok for now.
thanks for the help you guys (at DAL) are the greatest
--gregg

Thanks for the update.

I don't think we ever went into DirectX but if you don't have the latest 9.0 you can get it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

You can check these settings via Start | run | dxdiag

under the display tab.