Registry errors...please, PLEASE help..

[Booty]

I sold my old AMD K6-2 450 based system to a friend about 4 or 5 months ago, and she recently called me to see if I could help her install her new scanner and to see if I could get rid of an error.

She said that about a month ago, sometimes when she would start up the computer it would say that the registry needed to be repaired and prompt her to restart. She said it probably happened 4/5 of the time.

Well, I messed with it for a while, and got it to not come up quite so much, but in the end we decided to format and install winME (win98se was the previous OS). So I'm thinking everything's gonna be smooth, but part way through installation I get a blue screen and then first boot into windows I get that same registry error. So it's obviously not a software problem...so where do I go from here? What's the problem??

 

[AC]

could the RAM be at fault? CompUSA should have a RAM tester unit...

if not the RAM, may be motherboard is.

 

[Booty]

Well, unfortunately, that doesn't do me much good since there's not a CompUSA anywhere around here...and I kinda want to get the computer back to her today before I go back up to school...

 

[Booty]

Ok...so now I'm trying to reinstall programs and stuff in ME and this thing is totally unstable...errors left and right...WTF? I mean, I had this system for about 9 months with NO problems, she has it for like 4-5 and first the modem dies, now it's just totally FUBAR! Ahhh!!!

 

[AC]

u could try a software based RAm tester: DocMemory

 

[Vinny N]

A registry error like that occurs at some level of memory. Either the hard drive is going loopy (therefore causing the swapfile corruption constantly) or the RAM is bad or level 2 cache on the motherboard, or level 1 cache on the CPU.

Since you didn't mention anything out of the ordinary for the hard drive, I would test RAM first (do-able), then try disabling level 2 cache on the motherboard (slows down the system a lot but you'll find out soon enough if the cache is bad). The last resort is to disable level 1 cache on the CPU but you shouldn't have gotten as far as you have if that was bad.