Alright I've got a problem. I would appreciate any help you could offer. I have Windows XP SP3.
I was playing Sims 2 on Tuesday night. About an hour into it my computer just inexplicably restarted. I was like OK...no biggie...this has happened to me once or twice in the past few years and Sims 2 IS kind of a resource hog.
So I get back to my desktop and I have no taskbar. I go into the control panel and bring it back before I realize I have no drivers. No sound, no network, graphics look different.
System restore says it "cannot protect your computer. Please restart and try again." When I tried to boot into safe mode, the F8 key would not bring up the boot menu. It seems that my keyboard does not work until I'm actually IN Windows. So I went into msconfig and changed the boot.ini to boot into safe mode. I tried to install the drivers for my various devices but EVERYTHING I try to run is not a valid Win32 program, apparently.
So I got my XP disc. I figured I was overdue for a format anyway and there's nothing I care about losing. When I went to go format and went into the disc management tab in the manage part of my computer, it told me that the local rpc server was not available. So I went into services.msc and attempted to start the RPC server but it won't turn because of the dependency groups. I've never turned it off in the past.
I was figuring I could just boot from the XP disc but since my keyboard doesn't work until I'm in Windows I can't very well tell it to boot from the CD. I tried to go to the last known good configuration when I got into the boot menu by turning my power off at the Windows splash screen and restarting, but the keyboard didn't work there either.
I basically just want to do a format and am being turned away at every juncture. Any ideas guys?
RPC and Formatting Problems 
Linear Mode
