BleepingComputer.com: Do I need to reformat my hard drive?

Ok, I don't want to sound like an idiot here, but I'm a Mac person, and my PC is giving me nightmares...I'm not sure if it's the lovely new wormy or some past virus....but here's what's been happening...

The problem started by my system completely shutting down to a blue screen with a .sys error and a message that it was dumping memory now. So, I went to the windows site and started downloading updates (after defragging and the problem persisting).... Well, I got two updates taken care of, and now my system freezes on the Windows 2000 Operating screen about half way through the start-up process...

Any advice? Is this salvageable? Or do I need to reformat?

Thanks so much!

What version of windows?

Windows 2000 Pro

When you are booting your computer, right when the screen turns black and you see the Starting Windows and the white bar at the bottom, press the F8 key. This will bring up a menu . Select Last known good configuration. This will attempt to load windows with the last configuration that you had on a successful boot.

Thank you...tried it...still no go. (

THe last thing you can try is to boot up with the windows 2000 cd in the cdrom drive follow the prompts until it asks you what you would like to do. Have it try to repair your Windows installation.

It amy fix the problem, but you will quickly need to update your service packs right after, and maybe, reinstall some programs