XP Problem.HELP!!

I have a big problem. I installed xp pro on my desktop 4 days ago and everything was working fine. I set up 5 different logins for each family member and as of last night when I went to bed everything looked ok. Today when I woke up I had MBR 40 40 40 40...... all accross the screen. same thing after reboot. so I poped in the xp disk and tried to use the restore panel... no panel just a c:\ prompt. Help gave me a list of commands so I tried fixmbr
It says it was corrupted and it fixed it. still 40 40 40...
I tried the xp disk again to mabey reinstall xp and the partitions are weird...what was the D: drive is now the c: drive..what was the c: is now the D: with an unknown partition type. It was ntsf.
Anyone have any idea what might have hapened?
Could it be that my HD just took a crap? I installed XP because win98 was giving me error messages on boot, but xp seemed to work really well for the last 4 days.
Thanks.

You may have a hard drive issue, very likely bad sectors or the drive may just be dying. I highly recommend SpinRite or something like it to run a diagnostic on the drive. I just did recover a system that refused to boot to anything but a blue screen (WinXP Pro). I think I have a dying hard drive on that system, but it is working for now.

I really dislike telling someone to just format and start over. Normally, that doesn't help to get to the root of the problem. Diagnose first, format as a last resort. If you need information about SpinRite, PM me.

The Ultimate Boot CD has some handy drive analysis/repair tools as well, plus being entirely contained. I'm a big fan of it... http://ultimatebootcd.com/ It probably even has the drive manufacturer utilities all ready for you to use.

I also think that it is perhaps the HDD. I had nearly the same problems before my HDD craches.
I installed it. I was working 1 day and on the next morning nothing wanted to start. It boots you start that and that and then it craches. After restarting and restarting it don't want to boot anymore.

I would try the diagnostic tools from the HDD manufacturer, it certainly sounds like a hardware problem.

After all you were having problems with Win98, which tells me that the drive is rather old?

I'm pretty sure it's the drive also.......I just got home from work and booted onto a Knoppix cd to get here and the hard drive sounded like it has sand in it while the computer was booting. Really weird grinding sounds...
OH well....I'm gonna go out tommorow and buy a new drive and start from scratch, it just upset me that I spent 4 days setting up 5 screens and doing all the updates and configurations for each screen, had it working perfectly and then this.....
nihil the drive is like 5 years old, 10 gig, so I guess I could use an upgrade anyway.
zencoder I'm gonna download the ultimatebootcd, sounds like somthing that could come in handy.
rapier57, SpinRite sound interesting too, I'll google it.
Thanks for the help , now I'm gonna see if I can use Knoppix to rescue my digital christmas pics from the spent drive and burn thme to a cd.........wish me luck.

Knoppix was able to see the c: drive and burn my pics to a cd. Mabey my wife won't kill me in my sleep now....... I downloaded ultimate boot cd and I'm running a hd test right now. I'll let you know what the test's say.