[g8dhe]

Right well we have eventually got there, thank goodness!
First many thanks for some of the pointers especially cdob's link to http://www.911cd.net...showtopic=22092
after digging my way thru the many code boxes for the registry details, and comparing to what I had in the clean install, and finally remembering to copy across the relevant files to the driver's folder it all fired up
Some other minor hitch's but the system is currently back up and running and just gathering the updates needed to bring it right back up to date !
The main problem seems to be that the "Repair" mode really only does the job for deleted or corrupted existing files, and despite MS, assurances that it would also handle M/B changes, it can only deal with certain aspects, and the one it really can't handle is USB changes, they don't seem to have figured in the Win2k3 repair process!
Having the OS on a RAID 1 mirror has however been a godsend as it meant I could hold back one half of the pair until all is working as an additional backup just in case anything nasty happened! As it was nothing did, but it gives that confidence that you have a working copy as well as a full back up on another machine so it gives the confidence to play on one half knowing that the other half and a seperate backup exist if it all went pear shaped

Once again many thanks to those who offered assistance and support, hope to return the assistance myself in the future!

[jaclaz]

Good news.

Unfortunately (as it always happen in these cases) one has to throw to the stoopid thingy everything AND the kitchen sink, so it is difficult to later understand which exact step/change(s) were "needed" and "vital" and which one(s) were unneeded/redundant....

jaclaz