XP Crash/restore

On an XP pro pc, turned the pc on, it booted thru Starting Windows, a blue screen with two paragraphs flashed too quickly to read, then system rebooted. When trying to reboot normally, system keeps rebooting. Same is true for Safe Mode. Booted from cd to Recovery Console, but only boots to a c:/windows prompt. I did a parallel install to a different directory, got everything up and running, all data files intact. How can I troubleshoot the original problem? If I can repair the problem, I can boot to that installation and retain all my settings (four users, profiles, programs, etc). or: Is there a way to transfer all programs, profiles, etc. to the new installation, then delete c:\windows dir?
Thanks in advance!