Ok, here's the deal-
There's two machines involved in this ordeal...the problem machine, and mine which I used for a couple of fixes and testing purposes.
The problem machine at first was not booting, it would hang at the DMI pool screen (I don't recall the exact details; I was up all night working on it and got pretty tired).
-I ran Drive Fitness which found no problems whatsoever.
-I ran Memtest, which did find some errors. But I haven't seen any problems with the computer in question that would indicate they're urgent and planned to replace those RAM modules when I could.
-I then tried to reformat and reinstall Windows on the problem machine; Windows install kept corrupting. So I yanked the harddrive, plugged it into my own machine, and was able to reinstall Windows fine after a reformat.
Now, using my computer to reformat and reinstall Windows on the problem rig's harddrive worked and it was working fine for a couple of days, but then it stopped loading the DMI data however it still booted to desktop. Until today when it gives me a message stating the system file (C:\Windows\System32\config\system) was missing or corrupt.
Ran Drive Fitness again, still no errors. SMART has no problems. Running Memtest again now, nothing so far. But here's what I'm wondering:
Could a bad RAM module or two corrupt an otherwise ok OS installation somehow, like by causing damage to a file? Is there some other possible problem I could be overlooking, such as motherboard issues?
Also, while we're at it. When Memtest reports an error is there a way to tell which module it's in without taking one out and testing again?
Any help appreciated,
Brian
There's two machines involved in this ordeal...the problem machine, and mine which I used for a couple of fixes and testing purposes.
The problem machine at first was not booting, it would hang at the DMI pool screen (I don't recall the exact details; I was up all night working on it and got pretty tired).
-I ran Drive Fitness which found no problems whatsoever.
-I ran Memtest, which did find some errors. But I haven't seen any problems with the computer in question that would indicate they're urgent and planned to replace those RAM modules when I could.
-I then tried to reformat and reinstall Windows on the problem machine; Windows install kept corrupting. So I yanked the harddrive, plugged it into my own machine, and was able to reinstall Windows fine after a reformat.
Now, using my computer to reformat and reinstall Windows on the problem rig's harddrive worked and it was working fine for a couple of days, but then it stopped loading the DMI data however it still booted to desktop. Until today when it gives me a message stating the system file (C:\Windows\System32\config\system) was missing or corrupt.
Ran Drive Fitness again, still no errors. SMART has no problems. Running Memtest again now, nothing so far. But here's what I'm wondering:
Could a bad RAM module or two corrupt an otherwise ok OS installation somehow, like by causing damage to a file? Is there some other possible problem I could be overlooking, such as motherboard issues?
Also, while we're at it. When Memtest reports an error is there a way to tell which module it's in without taking one out and testing again?
Any help appreciated,
Brian
