Help with a crashed PC

[tzamroor]

Hi all

Recently built a new machine:
ASrock P4VT8+
P4 Prescott 3.0Ghz (not overclocked)
512MB generic PC3200 RAM (also not overclocked)
Radeon A9200SE 128MB G-Card
Onboard sound
120GB SATA HDD

Everything has been going fine. From time to time I used to get a bsod with a message which I could not traced on the internet. It only appeared about four times in the last 2 months and after a re-boot everything went back to normal. I have recently got two messges regarding a corrupted file which, again, disappeared with no other indication of what was about to happen. Last thursday I kissed my baby good night, turned him off and when I tried to turn him on again the next day I got a message telling me that "\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\CONFIG\SYSTEM" is missing or corrupt.

I know this message can show up if there are hardware issues but I thought I will try and repair the Windows installation anyway. When I chose to set-up windows (booting up to the installation cd-rom) I got a bsod with "registry error" message. So now I am a bit stuck and very concerned. How will I know which bit of my hardware is failing? BIOS recognises all my components and there are no problem during POST. RAM checks OK. I know this is a realy thick question but could it be that my CPU has had it?Could the PC go through all these stages without the CPU (run fron the BIOS chip?).

I am relly worried. It is one thing replacing a memory module. The CPU is bloody £130 quids worth.....

Any suggestions would be greatly appriciated.

Tzamroor

[tzamroor]

Just tried Memtest and the RAM passed with no errors reported....

Please tell me it is not my CPU....PLEASE!!!!!

[tzamroor]

Just spoke to an engineer who suggested that memory tests are not always that definitive.
He said HDD failure could also be the cause. Thankfully I have a spare small HDD which I am going to try. Will update with results.....
Judging by symptoms, he did not think I am having problems with a dodgy CPU.

Wish me luck honey, I am going in - :cheesy:

[mifa]

The way to figure out if you have a hardware problem is with a empty system.
remove everything, reboot, add one thing at a time, reboot again, etc untill it stops booting.

another way to reset everything is clearing your cmos/bios.

If that doesn't solve the problem it seems a windows os problem to me.
I don't know a lot about Win xp, but there are two ways to repair, i thought, so try the other one. if possible. or try linux instead

good luck

mifa

[tzamroor]

Right then - conclusions....

No hardware issues what-so-ever- PHEWWWWWW
Over panicked! no question about it….
But seriously, my windows installation got so corrupt that I could not even repair or re-install.
The only solution was to install another drive, boot to it, format the bad drive and then re-install windows on the ‘fresh’ drive.

Works a treat! SATA rocks!

Of course you can do the whole thing from DOS, with out installing another temporary drive, but I think it is a bit tricky with SATA drives.

Ta to all for help and support and shoulder to bite on……

Tzamroor