Hi again.. been running XP on a new computor. However, on the computor posting the above message is displayed and says put in original CD and try to repair as the file could not be found. No problems as reformatted and installed all systems again. Few days later after running OK (if a little slow)and it happened again. so.. does anyone have an idea why it keeps losing the file / what it actually means and whether it indicates terminality of board, memory or hard drive.

Currently keep re-installing daily to get over the problem - I know this might be wrong but I don't have enough test gear to swap so it's all i can do.

Thanks.

It could be a bad hard drive. What model system do you have?

There are two things that I could think of, offhand: a bad hard drive, or virus/spyware. If it is taking a few days to do this, I'd lean more towards virus/spyware. Just in case, run some type of hard drive diagnostic tool on your drive, and then check it for viruses or spyware.

It could be a bad hard drive. What model system do you have?

There are two things that I could think of, offhand: a bad hard drive, or virus/spyware. If it is taking a few days to do this, I'd lean more towards virus/spyware. Just in case, run some type of hard drive diagnostic tool on your drive, and then check it for viruses or spyware.

Thanks for that.. System Asus MB / 2.5g Barton AMD / 512 Crucial Ram / Excelstor 80g HD / Sony DVD - CD RW

Ran Ontrack Smart Suite Software that said HD tested OK. This time had funny message when initialising AOL that there was not enough memory to display page properly and to shut some windows - non open. The ram has been in another machine and ran OK, the processor seems to work fine with a temp of 46C

Do the BIOS and the OS recognize the full 512M of RAM?

If you want to rule out bad RAM, download and run memtest86; it's a free memory testing utility.

If the problem isn't really the RAM, open Task Manager and have a look at your running processes. Check for processes that might be using an unusually large amount of resources, and/or processes that might look "suspicious" (as alc6379 said, you could have some "nasties" in your system).

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