Yep, Another First-timer! Please Help.

[wentworthmeister]

Hey guys,
I'm a first-time system builder and a new forum member. I have just built my XP-Home rig and ran into a few problems along the way. First some specs:

Antec Nine Hundred
Coolermaster 650W Extreme SLi
Intel C2D E6300
Asus P5N-E SLi (Nvidia 650i)
2GB OCZ Platinum R2 (4-4-4-15)
320GB Seagate Baracuda SATA2 16M cache
Sony 16X DVDROM
Pioneer 111D DVDRW
ASUS 7300GS

Here's how it went.

I physicallly installed all components, set the boot devices in BIOS, booted from the XP-Home OEM CD and started installing windows. OK so far, until windows started copying some files from the CD and gave the message:

"setup could'nt copyy a file: cyycoins.chm" so i skipped it and the next 20 or so files that failed. Then i received the error: "STOP 0x0000000A".

I have read posts about this on these forums already. So i decided to start again. I rebooted, deleted the existing partition and (after a quick prayer) re-formatted the drive. And this time it worked, no problems!

So next i'm in windows, and i am setting the OS up. Then i rebooted and went into the BIOS to set up my RAM. I set the voltage at 1.9V (as per OCZ packaging) and the timings at 4-4-4-15 (also standard). After rebooting, windows won't load and i get the message "Systm Error: Lsass.exe" So i rebooted, restored the defaults and it all works again.

A week later, i decide to embark upon my first overclocking session. I set RAM to unlinked, CPU voltage to 1.35V, FSB voltage to 1.2V and went on my merry way. I got my e6300 to 2.6GHz (in small stages mind you) and stopped there. Then i moved on to the RAM. I did'nt want to overclock it, just set it up to work how it should. I set VDimm to 1.9V, timings to 5-5-5-15 and rebooted. So far so good. Then i tired 4-4-4-15 (OCZ specs), that worked too. On to 4-4-4-12, which also booted OK. So i finished saving my CPU-Z screenshots, and went to shut down so i could go to bed. I was about to shut down when the thing crashed and now i get the message: "windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

I know the registry is corrupt or something, but how did it happen? Now my rig is useless!
What is going on!?

[newbuilder14]

Have you tried just one stick of memory each per time? Bad memory sticks can falter XP installation.

[glc]

You have not proved stock stability yet - so you should not start overclocking yet. Put everything back to defaults, reformat, and start from scratch. What caused it? Overclocking with a component that could not handle what you were trying to make it do. You don't just go and overclock without running a lot of diagnostics and stress tests.

[wentworthmeister]

ok. thanks glc. i guess i will have to come back down to earth. have you got any suggestions for stress testing? (Programs, benchmarks etc)

[glc]

Several passes with Memtest86+, Prime95, Orthos.