Re: XP dead; tried everything; out of ideas; help!

From: Ron Martell (ron.martell_at_gmail.com)
Date: 12/06/04 

Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 21:28:06 GMT

"Ian P. Winsor" <NoSpam@nospam.com> wrote:

>I have a Thinkpad with XP Pro that belongs to a friend. He was installing a
>some software and the machine crashed. On reboot, it says that
>\Windows\system32\config\system is missing and that the system needs to be
>repaired.
>
>I boot with the Windows CD and select R to attempt a repair. I get to the
>point where I am prompted to select the Windows installation I want to
>repair, but when I make a selction, the install crashes. I give the
>following:
>
>"A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent
>damage to your computer"
>
>REGISTRY_ERROR
>
>STOP: 0x00000051 (0x00000001,0xE11AEB68,0x006F3000,0x000001D5)
>
>
>I ran Partion Magic 8. It says there is a problem with the boot drive (1516
>and recommends that I run a CHKDSK to repair. However, if I can't get the
>Recovery Console to boot, I can't run the CHKDSK.
>
>I removed both memory chips, one at a time and tried booting with each, but
>no joy.
>
>I upgraded the BIOS to the most current revision and reset it to defaults,
>no luck.
>
>I tried booting form the Windows CD and selecting Install Windows withthe
>intent of running a repair of the installed copy of Windows, but the install
>crashes with the same messages as above right at the point where it is
>looking at the hard drive for previous installs of Windows.
>
>My friend would be ok with formatting an rebuilding Windows frooom a clean
>install, but I can't get to that point in the Windows install to delete the
>current partition and reinstall. It crashes first.
>
>The machine has 1.5GB of unused pspace at the end of the hard drive, which I
>thought maynbe I could install a second copy of Windows on, but again, the
>install crashes before I get to that point.
>
>I also tried booting from diskettes, with the same result.
>
>I have looked at every MS KBase article I can find about these errors done
>Google searches on all of them too.
>
>Help me out here. Is there some bootable utility or download that anyone
>knows of that can help fix an XP NTFS partition? Any other ideas? I have
>never seen a problem like this one before.
>
>All help appreciated.
>
>Thanks.
>

I would suspect a hardware related problem, possibly defective RAM.
The fact that the problem exists even when booting with the
multi-diskette startup set indicates that the hard drive is not the
primary culprit.

Try a self-booting diskette based diagnostic such as Tufftest from
www.tufftest.com - there is a free version.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada 

-- 
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."