hi guys i have fixed this

this is how i fixed it for others who may experience this problem as i could not find the answer on the kb or anywhere on the net.


i found it was a corrupt registry. see q307545 on knowledge base.

but i could not use the recovery console because it would not accept the administrator password i believe that the user profile section was corrupt.

so i put the hard disk into a windows 2000 machine and copied the registry files from the repair folder so i could boot windows.

i then followed the knowledge base article 307545 from part 3 onwards.

thanks again Asendin for your input.

mike