Registry becomes corrupted. Please help

[Sickpuppy]

Windows Could Not Start Because the Following File Is Missing or Corrupt: \Winnt\System32\Config\System.ced

I am thoroughly aware that the ced is an unerased part of the previous message.

The problem is described here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q269075&

The two hardrives are in RAID0, and have been scanned for bad sectors both seperately and in the RAID configuration.

This is occuring a few days after a fresh install. It happend twice already. The solutions in the knowledge base do not work, and fixing it is beyond the ability of the owner of the computer. Even if it werent, having a backup is pointless if it must be used every few days.

The only thing the person installed after it was tested and rebooted many times, is Soundforge XP5. The previous occurance, installing an HP printer's software seemed to trigger the error.

Why does this happen?
How can it be prevented?
Would WindowsXP solve this?

Hardware:
Pentium4 3.0
ABIT P4P800 Deluxe
(2) 512 Corsair 3200 DDR
(2) Western Digital 80GB JB
Matrox Millenium 450 dual head
Audigy 2 Platinum Pro
USR Hardware Modem
Pinacle firewire card

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks a bunch in advance.

 

[Nothinman]

I would suspect hardware first, possibly memory or drive cables but HP software always sucks so that could be the problem.

 

[NogginBoink]

It could be hardware, or it could be a device driver writing to kernel memory that it didn't allocate (i.e. registry information in RAM) that is then flushed in its corrupted state back to disk.

For this, enable driver verifier (verifier.exe). Expect blue screens if you've got faulty drivers. But the blue screens are symptom telling you that you've got flaky drivers.

You can boot to safe mode to disable verifier if needed.

 

[Sickpuppy]

Verifier had no problems.

I ran memtest86 and I never get an "error" but the test locks up on the 2nd pass 3rd test 0% test progress. This is true using 1 stick in any slot, or both sticks in any configuration. This memtest problem is the only hardware anomoly that i could find by testing. It benchmarks flawlessly otherwise.

The ram is extremely hot after the tests, and i am wondering what would cause this: ram, processor, or motherboard.

I cannot test the memory in another board, nor test other memory in this board.

The Windows problem seems very common, and very puzzling, nobody seems to be able to find a common causality. I would be happy to send parts back to be replaced by newegg, but I want to be sure what i send back is actually defective.