I re-installed my sound card because it wasn't working properly. Then I re-installed my CD-ROM because it stopped working. After all this I restarted my system. The system now just keeps booting until it reaches the windows splash screen and then restarts itself. If i leave it it just keeps rebooting over and over. I used my DOS disk to see if I could change my directory to C: but it comes back "invalid directory"!. My CMOS recognizes my hard drive but it just won't boot it. I did not touch and of the hardware at anytime.

I'd just pray and hope that it will still work. Your computer may be physically damaged.

If prayer is sufficient for your purposes, you've come to the wrong forum. I've had people tell me that everything I ever need to know is in the Bible. I wanted the torque specifications for the cylinder head bolts on a 72 Mercedes. They weren't in the Bible. I've seen this happen before. My solution at the time was to reformat the drive and reinstall from scratch. I then install a second copy of NT in a separate partition, actually on a separate physical hard drive. Then if the same situation arises in the future, at least I can use the backup OS to load Veritas Backup Exec. and restore my primary installation of NT. Sounds convoluted, but a certain amount of instability is the price you pay for the powerful networking tools that you can, and maybe will want to be using with NT. Obviously, the current infinite loop is taking you nowhere. But if you boot from the installation diskettes with the NT CD in the drive, I'm pretty sure that you will have the opportunity to overwrite the Master Boot Record (MBR) when you're prompted to install the OS. If this is not an option, and you absolutely need to recover the origninal installation, what I would do is send it to a professional data recovery service. That option could prove to be somewhat expensive. As for "not touching any hardware," sometimes it is necessary to physically remove and reinsert a hardware device to get it to be recognized as a new piece of hardware by a plug and play operating system. If you are not familiar with pnpisa.inf, you should find it on your NT installation CD. My recollection is that you right click on it to be offered the option to "install" it into NT from the fresh install of Service Pack 1, as NT is not, by default, a PNP OS. And may God spare my heathen soul.

I thank u 4 your help but my CD-ROM is not being recognized either. Perhaps because all the data for it is saved in the C: drive. I have unplugged the hard drive but it still does not work. I've tried formatting C: but it still doesn't work. I think my hard drive is parked or shot. Any more suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Well, I just replaced a SCSI hard drive on an NT Server machine after Commomwealth Edison blew out a transformer. Sometimes it's hopeless to try and recover a damaged hard drive. Buy a spiral notebook and keep a log ogf each step in the NT installation process. That way you will at least become an expert for the price of your heartbreak. You'll start to ubderstand why some businesses pay people a full time salary to install and maintain their NT machines. People have lost their jobs and some have probably even jumped out windows (hopefully they worked in the basement) over NT system crashes. This might not be a bad time to mount a large shelf on one of your walls so that you don't scratch the dining room table, or don't have to crawl around on the floor under your desk, if you don't have a dining room.