XP Pro Startup Problems

[yarla98]

Hey everyone! (sorry so long winded here),
I'm REALLY hoping I can get some help with this as I have no idea what happened, or what is wrong. Last week, while watching a movie, I heard a funny noise in the house. Turns out it was my computer emitting one long beep. The computer had turned itself off. When I saw this I realized the the motherboard protection program kicked itself off and shut down my system. I have no idea why it would have overheated to kick this off. Honestly, after looking my whole system over, I could find nothing wrong that would have caused this to happen, so I thought that perhaps it was just a glitch in the software. I cleaned the PC out and reset the jumper to disable/re-enable this protection, and then rebooted my system. When it came back up it started to give me various errors on startup. These errors are below:

"Windows was unable to save all the data for the file C:\$Mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Pleast try to save this file elsewhere."

If I hit okay, it will come up with the same error for another file, and then another and so on. The files consist of these names: C:\, C:\Windows\Winserve.log, C:\Documents and Settings\Network Service, C:\Windows\System32\config, C:\Documents and Settings\Local Service, C:\Documents and Settings\{my username}, C:\Windows, C:\Documents and Settings\Local Service\Local Settings, and many many others, while some of these repeat often.

It looks to me like it is unable to load up the boot files to actually start windows. This error comes up when the logon screen comes up. I continued to try to get past this error but was unable to. I then ended up just shutting the system down and tried a fresh reinstall of Windows. This worked. I then proceeded to restore a nicely working ghost session with all my drivers on it and then proceeded to install all the software I needed. Everything went fine again.

The very next day, I sat down at my computer and found the same error(s) on my screen. I was in a huge rush to get it working so I did another reinstall and another ghost restore. Again it was up and running. This time it was up for about 3 days when I installed some games and was playing them. No problems at all. I shut the computer down at the end of this day. The next time I rebooted, there was the error again!!! This is driving me crazy!! It is acting like the system has a real problem, yet if I reinstall Windows and then the rest of my software, as long as I don't reboot...I'm fine. This sounds VERY odd to me and I have no clue as to how I can get past this proble. If there is a problem with my system, then what is it? Software...Hardware? If it is hardware, what piece is it? My Memory, the hard drive? Please help me out. I am really in need of a working system!!!

Thanks much! P.S. my computer stats are in my Sig.

[Cricket]

Is your system overclocked? If so, return it to stock speed.

Go to the Seagate website and download the hard drive diagnostic utility and test those drives.

Are the HDD's in a RAID set up?

Try changing the IDE cables.

Go to Simmtester.com and get DocMemory and test your RAM.

Did you set BIOS to default or Fail Safe settings?

What kind of CPU and system temps are you getting?

Have you pulled the HSF off the CPU and inspected the CPU die/core for damage?

Cricket

[yarla98]

The system is not overclocked at all.
I didn't test the drives and that is a good place to start...thanks!
The drives are not being used for RAID right now. I haven't gotten them set up for this yet.
IDE cables look fine, but I've can change these easily.
I'll be sure to test the memory as well....again, thanks for the advice on this one.
CPU temp runs between 108-115 degrees, and the chasis runs between 78-88 degrees. I've never seen temps higher than this yet.
I did not pull the fan off to inspect the CPU yet. I will do that as well if you think I should. I really appreciate the help. I'll let you know what the results are as soon as I get home from work and can test this all out! Thanks a ton!!!!

[yarla98]

Okay,
Here are the results! I checked my RAM with simmtester and it came back just fine. I also checked my HD and that was fine as well. I did find out that I was able to run my computer in safe mode just fine which makes me believe there is an actual software error in Windows. So, I reinstalled Windows again and put only my drivers back in it (no other software) and it was running fine. Now I'm really confused as to why this is happening and from what software this is happening from. I then installed some of my software that I use and it is still running fine. I did notice that IE is giving me some problems though, something that has happened to me in the past, and I probably need to reinstall XP again in order to fix this (maybe not as another post for someone else told me a way to get this to work without reinstalling for XP). I'm still REALLY confused about this problem and wish I had some more answers. Any other suggestions would be more than welcome, but I'm not sure any advice will be able to help me with this situation. Thanks though!

[Cricket]

Okay, it's time to do a visual inspection of your motherboard and look for any signs or damage...the computer emitted the one long beep and shut down for some reason. Look carefully at all the capacitors and check for leaking. Also check to see if there are any discolored areas on the motherboard.

I'd also pull the heatsink, clean the thermal transfer material off and check the CPU die for any signs of damage.

Cricket