repair tries to keep your drivers.
restoring the disc image is the same as formatting in my books :)
Are you certain that you did not have this problem with a fresh copy of Windows?
If you are going to restore the disc image can you please uninstall all the drivers and software to see if you can discover what the culprit is?
good luck this weekend.
Update:
uninstall you version of office 2003!
do it ! do it now!
i know you have it...
hehe
heard this may be the culprit
