Hi Chris,
You have previosly very kindly sent me the xp pro and xp home install disks with keys, so I have them.
The machine is a HP and I have the operating system cd that came with it. although on the disk it says it should only be used with the restore cd, when i put it in to have a look at its contents, it did come up with the install xp menu.
My plan is to re-install from this disk (although its sp1) and then apply sp2 from a the microsoft sp2 cd.
The uninstall routine i found via google but here is the link
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218/en-us
The most worrying thing about this is the loss of the .msc routines, the only thing I am now starting to think about is that I recently downlaoded regclean and may have accidently when scrolling down the screen clicked on an entry which has caused this problem, but that is not definate.
its 09:40 now, i have a couple of other little jobs to do and plan to start the install around 10:30 so hopefully you will reasd this before then if there is any thing i should not be doing.....
Cheers
Colin.