"thread."
First of all let me state that this is the weirdest case with a computer I have ever seen.
The machine is a Dell Dimension 8550, with an Intel Pentium 4 processor, 512 MB of ram, a 120 GB HDD, and Windows XP Home.
The computer is running Symantec SystemWorks 2003, and Zone Alarm Firewall. A scan with NAV finds no viruses.
The problem with the computer began when the user was using AOL 9 to surf the internet. Windows Explorer crashed, but instead of reloading as is expected with XP, it failed to. The user then did a hard reboot with the power button on the PC. Upon boot, the computer ran scandisk, and then attempted to boot to windows. It gets the Windows XP loading screen with the green scrolling bar, and then advances to the welcome screen and displays the mouse. At this point it plays the startup sound, but it sticks on this screen for about 2 mins. When the screen disappears the user is left with a black screen and a mouse. A minute later the mouse/hourglass, as the computer detects the HP Scanjet attached and it makes it's warmup sounds. But then nothing.
If you ctrl+alt+delete, no applications have loaded but under the processes tab, system idle process remains at 99%.
Had the user boot into safemode, and used msconfig command to remove all startup items. I then rebooted to the same problem.
Booted into safemode again, and attempted to run system restore back to Feb 14 (the last restore point -- before installing SystemWorks.)
The computer restores, reboots, and nothing.
A second attempt to run system restore does not prompt with the option to undo last restore, so I am pretty sure it never completed the first restore action.
Our next step, we booted from the user's WinXP CD, and tried to do a repair installation. This however also failed to correct the issue.
At this point I know of nothing else to do. We booted into safe mode, and copied all of the user's important data onto his 40GB USB2 hard drive, and the current plan is to totally format and reinstall.
Any suggestions before we take this course of action?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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