Windows XP refuses to start at random

[Soapy Bones]

I have Windows XP and in the past 6 weeks, I have had this error come up about once couple of days or a week at the most. The error is the wonderful windows\system32\config\system file is missing or corrupt and try the recovery console blah blah blah..

I have absolutely no idea what is causing this to happen. The last change that was made on the computer before this happened was going to office update (office XP) and downloading the 2 latest updates. I restarted it via its own restart button and bam, there it was again. I tried running the recovery console and chkdsk in that directory and after about 45 minutes of waiting it came back and said that there were errors. I re-ran it with /r at the end, supposedly correcting those errors. After it took about 2 hours to do this, it still had not corrected anything and did not say that there were actually any errors at all.

This has happened now for the past 6 weeks as I said before, randomly and doesn't necessarily mean any changes at all on my part. On this most recent setup I had windows XP SP2 running, with the most recent addition was the new Windows spyware blocker. However that was a few days ago and before these problems started.

As far as physical changes to the system, before all of these problems started I had previously added a used 512 stick of Crucial ram, the correct model for my motherboard, a pioneer 108 Dvdrw drive, and mixed around a couple of hard disk drives, 2 identical maxtor 80 gigs, a maxtor 20 gig and an old WD 5 gig. I added the 5 gig and the dvdrw drive at the same time, and the problems did start a week or 2 after, however there was never anything on the 5 gig drive. If there is any more information I could provide that would be useful please reply or aim me, lather64.

Thank you

 

[bendixG15]

did you run memtest on individual memory sticks ???
Bad memory will garbage up files on the hard drive.

 

[Soapy Bones]

I dont know how to run memtest, don't really have any experience with it at all... i have 3 total sticks, 1 512 (original) and then 2 identical 256 added weeks before this problem started.

 

[Soapy Bones]

Ok, first of all this needs back to the top.

I read up on memtest86 and ran it all last night, to no avail. it ran for 10 hours or so and came up with absolutely no errors with all of my ram in, (1024), so I dont know what to make of that. I guess it is unlikely the problem?

 

[dunkster]

Random system problems often are due to weak read/write blocks on the HD.

Run CHKDSK /p /r for a thorough test of both file and HD integrity.

I'd also run the HD utility offered by the maker of your HD to test HD integrity. These utilites do only the HD integrity test, but with better head read-sensitivity than the CHKDSK test. WD DLGDIAG has found weak blocks on my WD HD that CHKDSK could not detect.

Hope this helps!

 

[Soapy Bones]

Here is an update to my situation thus far.

I did some more searching on here and decided to try the microsoft xp help thing, which is http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545 and have gotten about halfway through that. I did manage to get back inside of that install of windows by reverting to an old registry i guess, but that isnt all that helpful as nothing works yet. I cannot get access to the C:\system volume information folder yet to finish the rest of the procedure even under the administrator settings. I am hopeful that by doing this I will be able to get the system back to exactly where it was basically and not have to reformat that drive at all. THat is the ideal situation.

I would find it hard to believe that the hard drive is the culprit becuase I have had this problem on every single hard drive in my system, detailed above, at different points this year. I have read that someone had a bad hard disk controller, which I know nothing about other than I have an Asus motherboard, forget the exact model at the moment.

I will try the hd testing functions either way however.

I also did run the chkdsk /r i think, not /p/r would that make a difference?
It came up with errors under just chkdsk so i ran chkdsk /r and it ran for hours, and then just finished not saying it did anything really, but said no errors, and then i rebooted to the same problem.

Thanks

 

[Soapy Bones]

I successfully ran the windows support advice and am back online with the originally drive and settings, worked great.

I would still REALLY like some other opinions on what could have caused this problem, its still a mystery to me.

I have now ran memtest86 for 12 hours and ran the WD diagnostics utility and it came back with no errors. I noticed others had commented that their system file was either extremely large or extremely small.... mine was at about 4 mb, which i have understood to be the average or a good size.

I'm just clueless....!