Computer boot issues, resolved?

[longrawker]

(this thread is also posted in General Hardware, as i have no idea what the problem could be, and it involves hardware and software... by all means move this thread if you think it's in the wrong place...)

Hello once again.

Serious problems again with our computer. It's a Dell Dimension 8200.

The problem this time is beyond my skill to fix. The computer would begain to boot, but it would say that the system crashed, and give you the choice to boot in safe mode with command prompt, safe mode with ethernet controler, or safe mode, last good system settings, or boot normally. No matter what choice was made, it would boot past the "Windows xp home" with the little scrolling colored bar, to a blue screen that said "windows xp" in the corner, and it would give our system info. It would say Microsoft Windows build 5.2 (not sure if that's the right #), service pack 2, single processor, 265 mg RAM. And that's all, it would not respond to anything aside from holding the power button for five seconds to turn off. No options were given or anything...

I checked the bios, and the AGP aperature (i think that's what it was called) was set at 256mg, and our Computer Architecture teacher had told us that it should be set at half of the RAM mg, so it should be 128mg. I set it to 128mg, and the problem stayed the same. It would boot untill it came to agpcpq.sys and then freeze. (i have changed the startup so that in stead of the scrolling bar, you actually see what's going on. It was a PcMech tip a while ago... it worked fine for a long time, so i dont think that was the problem.) After it froze, absolutely nothing would happen... it would sit there for hours frozen.

I did a cold boot, and it froze at the same place. I sat there for a while, then I decided to leave it. Came back five minutes later, and it had loaded fully. However, it took about 10 minutes longer than it should have...

I tried to log into my account, but the log in screen was frozen as well.

Help??

(All apologies for the long story... i'm trying to give as much background as possible.)

[glc]

Thread closed, crosspost. Refer to General Hardware.