For some reason I now seem to have two XP installations on my computer... I guess one never gets it perfect. 
I haven't yet dared to see what heppens if I try to start the other XP, and I doubt I ever will. Seeing us everything is working just fine for the moment, I don't want to jinx it by being too nosy.
When you get some spare time, and if you wish to find out if you actually have two versions of XP running, or just two entries in your boot.ini (in which case you can get rid of one and save the hassle of waiting for the countdown timer):
1) Hold down your Windows key, and press Pause | Break (located at top of keyboard, above the right arrow key).
2) Click "Advanced" on top.
3) Under the "Startup and Recovery" section near the bottom, click the "Settings" button.
4) Under the "System startup" section, click the "Edit" button, near the middle of the box. (Don't worry; this won't harm anything.
)
5) Select everything (CTRL + A) and CTRL + C it to a post... when exiting, don't save the file changes if it asks you. (It shouldn't; you didn't change anything... but still!
)
Or, you can just interpret the results yourself... I have two different partitions; I'll show you my boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=5
This is how long Windows waits before selecting the default OS entry, defined below.default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
This is the location of the OS you wish to load by default if no other OS is chosen before the timeout defined above expires.[operating systems]
This is a list of Operating Systems, see notes afterward.multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional on drive M" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
Take a look at the following articles; after you've read them all (they aren't long), you should have a pretty good idea of how the boot.ini works.
http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/bootini.htmhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/information/bootini.mspxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTLDR#boot.iniNow, if I had something like:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Noting that both locations are the same, I can just erase the non-default one and have done with the prompt for the separate OS, which is actually just another pointer to my one true OS. If the switches at the end were different, I'd take a look at the switches definitions mentioned in the above links, and customize as necessary, or, alternatively, just keep the ones that are tagged onto the working (default) entry.
Now, if your partition numbers
are different, then you have 2 XP OSes installed... which can come in handy. Try booting the other OS... it should come up with XP the way it was before you re-installed. True; the sound is broken... but, if you can fix it by copying files or whatever from the other OS partition, then you have a "test" OS that you can screw around with before actually applying changes to the other OS.
Of course, you may never feel like tackling this... but if you do, and you need help or have questions, don't hesitate to ask.
