Many Thanks for the assistance, now booted up OK into normal Windows after the non-recovery console chkdsk ran. i.e. the blue screen one.

As I said, I did try booting up into safe mode first, after killing the AVAST drivers, but got stopped at hotcore3.sys
It was only when I tried to let windows boot normally that the full XP chkdsk invoked and checked all the RAID partitions. It then booted OK, albeit with lots of stuff I’d previously disabled via msconfig still inhibited.

No idea why running chkdsk from the DOS style recovery console screen didn’t do the trick.

I do suspect it was still something to do with AVAST though, as I was having major booting problems a couple of weeks ago, but I could get into safe mode that time. This time it all started when I plugged an SD card reader in with some photos on from my new camera. Avast started to scan it, PC froze, BSOD and you know the rest.

Previously as I had safe mode I could get as msconfig and prevent almost everything loading, enabling a program at a time.
Following that scenario, I uninstalled Commodo and went back to Windows Firewall and needed to re-install avast then as well, as it was misbehaving.

Now uninstalled AVAST again, but not risked re-booting to complete the uninstall yet. Madly backing up all data to the latest versions to USB hard drive with another copy to a NAS.

Also trying to create a Ghost boot CD with the latest slipstreamed RAID drivers. Hopefully that will work when I test it, ;D

On re-booting, I got the pale blue XP “Please wait…” screen, presumably whilst Windows was clearing out AVAST, followed by a normal boot.

Hopefully, I’ve also attached an FRST report if you get the chance to have a read. ( this was from an msconfig selective startup re-boot)

Many thanks for taking the time to try and help me out, even if it didn’t go exactly as planned.
FRST has also generated Addition.txt, which I could add if required, I suspect it points to another few possible issues

In the short term at least, I think we can call it a success; just need to try the New Ghost Boot disk next, but off for my tea and the out for a beer to celebrate. Driving in the morning though so not too many :cry: