i wasn't finished my question.
TO CONTINUE...

when i rebooted and selected SAFE MODE i unexpectedly got strange DOS-like info in white letters on a black screen and then nothing. rebooted, tried LAST SAFE CONFIG... but that was too late i guess and got the same result as with the SAFE MODE attempt. so i can't get the bootscreen stage AT ALL.
i thought, i just needed to change the value in that one ini file to onscreen values (say 10 and 590). took my hard drive and installed it in my wife's computer and made this change. returning the HD to my computer, i rebooted and got the same bluescreen with the same error message "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL".
THEN i thought, OH, changing the ini isn't enough. bootskin.exe must just use the selected skin-files as a reference to make changes to certain system files.
WANTING to revert these files, i need to know, what files,drivers,dlls etc. do i need to change or delete to get win XP to ignore bootskin for 1 single boot so i can get to bootskin and revert it to the original bootscreen??? only thin i found so far was "delete vidstub.sys". is this enough? ps, the sp2 upgrade is in the distant past.
HELP.