can anyone help me with a problem i have booting my pc. i will try to give as much info as possible and will be extremely grateful for all help given.
i had gone on holiday and before i went pc was working perfectly. when i went i turned off pc at the socket. when i returned i turned on the pc and it hung while booting with the message "verifying dmi pool data"
i had a look in the cmos and and noticed that the clock was wrong.
was told that the battery was drained so removed it and inserted new one.
pc still booted to "verifying dmi pool data" and then froze.
was told to run the xp recovery console and try fixmbr and fixboot
have tried both of these and now get the "verifying dmi pool data" message followed by "invalid partition table" message.

i am now stuck and am hoping not to have to do a re install so any help would be appreciated.

OK, try to run CHKDSK /R in Recovery console.
If not, I'd do a soft format this will re-install Windows and back up your documents, pictures ECT to a folder called something like my old documents.