I managed to sort it out last night, I've got 2 hard drives - a new 160 gig seagate barracude and a 60 gig drive that came with the system when I bought it, this is the one that has fucked up I think (it's about 3-4 years old now and is *horror* an IBM, so its coming to end of its life I reckon).
Unfortunately my OS was installed on the smaller drive and I was using the larger one for dumping data on - torrents, pics, music (which all came to about 60 odd gig! jesus!)
Managed to rescue things with my emergency recover disc and win2000 disc, but things still weren't great - but at least managed to rescue stuff like essential torrents, music, outlook .pst file etc.
I've installed XP pro on the newer barracuda drive and going through the horrendous but familiar process of installing software, what a fag man.
so here's the plan - new kit; athlon64 3000+ (venice core), asus A8N mobo, new PSU (450W), new case and prob an X800 graphics card. I can rescue sound card, memory etc from old system and then have fun ha ha! Hopefully I'll have some dosh too for a SATA seagate drive (90 notes for a 250gig, bargain) then can mirror a drive in case anything goes tits up....
god this is the 2nd time this has happened and each time it's a right pain, such is life when computers are a large part of it eh? (sad I know)
see ya'll soon - when komplett and aria have milked my pocket!