XP3 Crash

Hey gang,
Running XP3 pro, Q9650, 4 gig ram, GT260. Went to boot the computer and got the "Windows\system32\config\system" file was corrupt or missing. Fine, find my XP pro disk, for a repair but once I select 1 for the c drive I get the old blue screen with 0x00000051 plus the other 4 but I know that's a reg error. Any ideas on how to recover from this, if possible without having to nuke/pave. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[glc]

I'd run hard drive and ram diags. I think your hard drive may be developing bad sectors and/or the ram is causing corruption.

I suspected some bad sectors however I can't get anything to run of the XP cd. If I try a repair, it blue screens. That rig is the only xp I got, this desk top is Win7 and the laptops are Vista or I'd burn UBCD and try those tools. I'm not sure who the manufacture of the hd is, its an older alienware system before Delll took over. Is there something I can do with the XP cd that I'm missing here? Thanks for the assist.

[orbrit]

Can you boot to the CD, run the recovery console to get to the command prompt?

If so can you run

chkdsk c: /r

This will repair any errors found if your drive is not in too bad a shape.

[glc]

You can burn a UBCD on a Vista or Win 7 system. It's just an iso, operating system neutral. Hitachi Drive Fitness Test will run on any brand drive (and will ID the brand) - or you could open the case and look at the drive to get the brand.

Thanks for the help, I just went ahead and nuke and paved the hd. I had ran chkdsk, it said it fixed some errors but I kept getting the same corrupt system32 file. This is a machine I use for home schooling my 8 year old plus he plays games on it. Somehow the OS got corrupted and as we all know, nothing runs better (at least for a while) than a fresh Windows install. Thanks again for great assistance as usual.

[glc]

I'd still run diags on the hard drive. If it has bad sectors it's just going to do it again.

I ran the Seatools set and it passed them all. Only issue I'm having now is the computer boots/reboots and shuts-down slow as heck, like 2-3 minutes each way. I've got hardly any software loaded, all updates are done. I've verified mb/graphic's drivers and bios but still much slower than it was before. Really scratching my head here, got zip loading on start-up so have no idea what's wrong and 2 hours on the phone with AW didn't help either. Any idea's??

[glc]

Call Seagate - you can probably get a replacement drive. That's very symptomatic of a screwed up hard drive.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to run memtest86+.

[kisk]

You can check the HD's SMART data with a tool called HD Tune. It also has an error scanning section, however I prefer drive-specific tools.

Wouldn't hurt to run a "chkdsk c: /f /r" in the command prompt (say yes for next reboot) on the disk again

[glc]

Chkdsk /r also assumes /f. It does both.

I ran Chkdsk /r and it fixed a few error's before I ran Seatools. The backup software I installed clone's the hd and updates it hourly. If "c" fails I'll use "d" as my boot drive until I replace the bad one. Thanks again.

Well, I ran Seatools long and short test, Chkdsk/r, memtest86 and no errors plus numerous malware scans, all clean, so I'm pretty much stumped why this rig boots/reboots and shuts down so slow now after a fresh install of the OS. As I said earlier, got the "c" drive cloned so if it does fail, I'll just run off the "d" drive until my new one arrives.