strange boot error loading xp -- says "y∞y∞"

[jimbomanz]

hi all,
im working on a friends pc with winxp pro sp2, running on a p4 3.1, 1gig ram. and a 160 g maxtor. its giving me a wierd error when booting up, it goes past the initial bios screen, then goes to the black screen with a bling cursor in top right corner. then it goes to the diagnostics screen with all your drives and info on it. at the bottom of this screen where you would usually get a error message with windows like "error loading *.ini" or something similar, it just says "y∞y∞". i have never came across this before and cannot find anything similar to it on the web. im guessing it has something to do with booting up, as it doesnt, and was wondering if anyone has any idea what is going on. im thinking i should try and boot from the xp disc and run recovery, or just reinstall windows, but the guy im fixing it for wants all his info, so a reformat(what i think is the best idea) is not an ideal solution.
thanks...

[Panama Red]

Here's what I would do. Pull his hard drive and slave it to another machine. Save all his files. Reinstall his hdd and use Memtest86+ to test the memory and MaxBlast to test the hard drive. If both check out ok, use the XP disk to do a Repair Reinstallation. Done correctly, this will replace the damaged XP without touching the installed programs or his personal files. Use this link as a guide.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=151522