xp hangs before desktop appears

[tacoeater]

customer brought computer with this problem:
seems to hang at the welcome screen (no user name appears) but then it goes on to the first blue screen
where he has a picture of his kid. never goes all the way to the desktop.
tried last known good configuration.
tried safe mode....there were two icons, the administrator and one user name i chose administrator (no password required)
it hangs at the screen listing safe mode and the build.
tried (but don't really know how) to use the recovery console but it took me to the place where you choose which installation (1) and then it stops at the c:\windows prompt
is there something i can do at that prompt or am i choosing the wrong recovery method? It seems i have heard of some other function which comes up after the repair with recovery console....is there a repair function which is different from recovery console?
thanks
alan

[ThePoor]

pop in the winXP cd to repair windows, by-pass the first time it ask to repair, but choose repair the second time when it searched and found XP installed on hDD...

[tacoeater]

ok
thanks