XP loop on boot

[Needtoknow]

Hello all,
I have a P4 with XP home edition- inherited as usual- issue is every so often- (this is a super patchwork build by the way) anyway, sometimes it freezes and requires a reboot and then will go to the POST screen and then splash screen and as it is loading, the loading indicator will go twice acreoss and then third time it freezes for a half second and goes back to the POST screen and reboots.
This has happened before and I have tried to go safe mode, restore to last known good settings and using recover option when booting from the disk. I followed a long sequence of command entries but couldn't get it to work.
It was supposed to restore the boot drivers, but I couldn't get it to work- had to reformat and reinstall.
I remember there was a way in 98 that allowed one to use the boot disk to reinstall the boot drivers when they were corrupted so the whole disk wasn't wiped and had to do a fresh install, but I can't find one for ths version of XP.
i also thought XP could be reinstalled over the existing install and he would not require wiping and reinstalling. I thought it could just re-install the corrupted drivers and go on down the road.
It just did it again, but I did ckdsk from the restore screen and rebooted 20 times and got it to load- but I want to find an answer before it happens again.

Late Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Any help is always welcome!

Thanks

Hal