Mosesix

Shassouneh, I agree the instructions are pretty sloppy - especially as it thinks it's being helpful telling you to basically reinstall Windows! Incidentally I think a 'repair' clears all your restore points anyway... To be a bit clearer (and to not let my first post be my last!) I only followed steps 3, 4 and 5 from the MS support page. I then restarted XP and it worked fine. Does that make any difference? If not then I guess your problem is a little more complicated than mine...

I've just had the exact same problem as you, Shassouneh, and have been pulling my hair out trying to solve it. In my despair I came across this page, but also remembered a similar problem I had once: I was getting a blank screen on the product activation page, which is pretty bad! So I dug around for the solution I used back then and here it is: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q314935 It's a quick change of a registry value, an install of some stuff from the XP CD, and then a manual register of some java/vb stuff. Although it's aimed at sorting out the problem for the activation screen, I've just tried it and, lo and behold, it's worked for the restore screen too! Hopefully it works for you too - I've registered with this message board just to post this! Good luck! And Happy New Year!