Barely threading water

[didcrywolf]

the good news is I can still barely use my system.
I run Xp-pro Sp2 on aASus a8n-SLi Athlon 64 3500 and A couple of Seagate Sata 200Gb drives. LAst night I started having trouble wiht my system frozes while doing remote work.
I had the blue screen bit for a while and I used BArt PE to do a chkdsk after I couldn't get into the Xp-pro recovery console. I managed to get back to anormal xp boot but I fear it's going to go anytime soon
I ran anti-virus (f-prot) bit defender 8, registry mechanic and registry clenaer.
What software should I have and what basic tool kit (using either diskettes, boot disks or Flash drives) so that I can at last figure out what is wrong with my system if I can't boot in XP from drive?

I am downloading PCMARK05 to get a sense of the possible areas of problems.
I think it is either the mem, the cpu , the sata controller or the drive itslef ( did I leave out anythingelse? hahaha)
I want to print out the top 10 tools (diagnostics etc.)to have and a course for action if the problem reoccurs which I fear will not be too long from now

Thanks

DCW

[EarthsDM]

I think that Microsoft Word has a spell checker. Other than that you may want to reinstall your OS.

[radcon56]

HA HA!! I will second that!!! LOL

[cloasters]

I see much worse spelling around here than DCW's.

[cadaveca]

in the "run" line, type "sfc /scannow" and when prompted, insert your windows disk. It may ask for a professional disk if you are using XP home, just ignoer that and stick in YOUR XP DISK.

This utility will scan the windows system files, and ensure they are ok, however any dll's or anything else added to the system folder will not be a part of this scan.

After you do that, un-install ALL DRIVERS, and then re-install..starting with DirectX, then chipset, video, lan, others, then sound.

If this does not fix things, a format is needed.

[Soul99]

First thing i would do in this situation is try to find out wether its a software or a hardware problem.

You mentioned you had a couple of hard drives.

Keep your current windows install for the moment, install windows on another hard drive, install the needed drivers and begin testing.
see of you can run 3dmark for a few hours, prime 95 for a few hours, play some games, just see how it behaves.

If your still getting problem then its prolly not your windows thats at fault but an actual hardware fault.

If you suspect it to be a hardware fault then start testing,
I use memtest86 to test my ram.
You can use seagates hard drive utilities to test your harddrives for errors.
3dmark for GFX card testing.
Prime95 for CPU testing.
If you can replace any hardware in the pc to eliminate it as the problem then do so (if you had an old pc laying about with a compatable PSU for example you could swap it in and see how it behaves).

Trial and error.

Soul99