Is reformatting my only remaining option?

Originaly posted in software forum.
Moved here on rustyjack's advice.

I looked over the malware removal thread with OS specific cleaning instructions, but since I cant boot up in normal or safe mode, I'm not sure if any of the steps can help me.......am I totally boned or is there still hope?

Short story:
Got a virus.....eventually removed the virus.(so I thought) Went to bed with the PC running, woke up with the pc in a never ending cycle. Boot fails and goes to failed start up selection screen. No matter what selection is made, safe mode, last known, or normal, the same thing happens....fails and kicks back to the selection screen. 30 second count down then attempted reboot....and the cycle cotinues.


Long Story:
Was awakened Saturday morning by my wife saying the computer was acting funny.....checked it out....was that fake antivirus thing....Internet Security 2010.

ESET didn't detect it(hadn't updated for about 2 months because it was expired), trend micro froze during an online scan after finding and deleting 5 infected files, Avast was a joke, Malware Bytes found and deleted 26 infected files. Uninstalled All antivirus then installed, updated, and ran Panda Antivirus Pro 2010. Everything seemed good.

Rebooted multiple times just for shits and giggles, then used the pc with no problems for about 3 hours. Left the PC running and went to bed.

Woke up the next morning with the computer rebooting/failing over and over again.

Ran virus scan from Panda bootable cd....no infections found.

Booted with bootable recovery console disc, used bood config, check disk, fixboot, and fix master boot record......used the proper commands but still the same result.


So now I don't know what to try next.....could someone point me in the correct direction?

XP Home SP3
Sony VAIO PCV-rs720g

For the past couple of months either my hard drive, or a fan, has been intermittently noisy, but I'm not convinced that my HD has failed since I'm able to access with bootable antivirus and recovery console.

Thanks for any info