there is nothing in the cd drive at the moment, right?
think simple. what could cause this? getting past boot.ini sounds like....file system error. bad places on hd. video card error. bad ram. too hot in box for video or processor. plenty of coincidences out there...
have you been inside the box? if not, don't go in there right away. if yes, did you wiggle stuff. we know you did. what can you reseat? memory? video? fans all spinning? smell burnt or feel hot? last desperate attempts to tshoot might involve pulling out all the cards you can...but not yet.
boot from an win2k server installation cd to try the trick of pretending you are going to reinstall so installer will find your current installation and offer to repair it. i would try this first if i felt my hardware was not to blame.
you are running anti-virus yes? probably ntfs file system on boot drive, yes? boof from ntfs boot floppy read and test your hd. will be comforting to see the files there. will be progress. backup important stuff then run chkdsk /f. how is fragmentation on this drive? considered a rescue installation of the os? perhaps on another physical drive which you will now place in the system...thereby also testing your hd controller hopefully.
when i am really stumped i pull off all the io devices to see if i can affect the boot at all. bad keyboard very lengthy to tshoot sometimes. get helper to scare up known good keyboard (usb if ps2 in there now or vice versa) and mouse and the server installation cd's. ask them to go to support.microsoft.com to see how to make me an ntfs boot floppy and then please make me one.
if you have not much pressure on this, i would use as excuse to try for free support from ms just don't pull out cc and it won't cost. (...thought maybe it was an ms update, can you think of any other reason...) and/or hp. just so you know if you want to get those guys involved next crunch time. you can fix it.
break a leg.
