My "SYSTEM" registry file got currupted last night. I'm on a secondary XP installation right now.

I was doing some work and realized I needed more RAM - I had some borrowed one laying around from when my own RAM went dead 3-4 weeks ago, so I installed these.

Few hours later I began getting odd "crashes" - the monitor would loose the signal and therefor turn off - if listening to music, then the music would either stop after a few seconds, or go into a loop like an old record player.

Then it started to do this during boot (just after the XP logo).

I could boot in Safe Mode, so I tried older drivers, but it didn't help - removed the RAM.. seemed to help, but nope, problem was still there. Then at one time it happenede during some LFS'ing.. and when I tried to boot again, I got the boring message about system registry missing or being corrupt.

I've replaced it with the one from my repair folder - now I'm getting blue screen during boot (after XP logo).

I'm currently making some backups, and will then manually copy registry files from an earlier restore point folder.. maybe it will help, maybe it wont - then it's onwards to a new XP install if it doesn't :|

Anyways.. the monitor turning off - whats up with that? Never seen it before. Worst case scenario would be a faulty GFX board - but could it that the system registry was (less) currupted at this time, but enough to be the cause.. I mean, software related?

As meantioned, I'm on a secondary XP installation right now - been making backups for the past 30+ minutes and no symptoms so far.

My RAM went dead 3-4 weeks ago and now this... I'm annoyed :|

Forgot to mention two things:

1. The RAM I put in is some Samsung DDR PC4200 - My own RAM is Corsair DOMINATOR DDR2 PC28500 myself.

2. I had a look in the Event Viewer while I was still able to boot. It had a loggeed a critical error: nv-something.dll (nvidia driver) was running in infinite loops. It said that it's caused by either the driver... or the device (yikes :| )

Quote from r4ptor :

Forgot to mention two things:

1. The RAM I put in is some Samsung DDR PC4200 - My own RAM is Corsair DOMINATOR DDR2 PC28500 myself.

That's your problem right there. You can't put DDR in a DDR2 slot. And, if your motherboard is one with both DDR and DDR2 slots, you cannot use both DDR and DDR2 at the same time. It's either one or the other IIRC.

Quote from r4ptor :

Anyways.. the monitor turning off - whats up with that? Never seen it before. Worst case scenario would be a faulty GFX board - but could it that the system registry was (less) currupted at this time, but enough to be the cause.. I mean, software related?

Do you have an AGP video card? Either that, or your motherboard is one with the northbridge and southbridge in one chip. Maybe you fried your chipset? But, if you reinstall windows, and everything works fine, then your hardware is probably fine.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

That's your problem right there. You can't put DDR in a DDR2 slot. And, if your motherboard is one with both DDR and DDR2 slots, you cannot use both DDR and DDR2 at the same time. It's either one or the other IIRC.

Wooops.. typo, sorry :P Both are DDR2.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Do you have an AGP video card? Either that, or your motherboard is one with the northbridge and southbridge in one chip. Maybe you fried your chipset? But, if you reinstall windows, and everything works fine, then your hardware is probably fine.

PCI-E.

I manually copied the registry files from a few day earlier Restore Point, but it didn't help much. Then chose to repair using the XP CD and now I'm here.. weee.. or at least so far so good :P

Because it's not fully optimal - when I first tried, LFS would crash when trying to play back a replay. Then installed gfx drivers after a neat cleanup, and now I just came back from a 30 min hotlapping session without probs

Few other things too - Kaspersky AV lost my registration key, but I re-entered it, and it seems to be working fine now. SpeedFan crashes the computer when I try to start it - I'm guessing (hoping) it's because I need to re-install chipset drivers.

There might be other issues, but so far it looks like they are fixable without any pain... so I'll keep it this way and see how it goes.

Btw... I have a theory as to why this happened: I'm suspecting the registry database got currupted because of the lame SATA interface deign.

It all started few hours after I had install more mem - makes sense that way, that I might have touched the cables.

Later when I repaired using XP CD, it went through it all, and when it restarted for the last time, it never came back on.. I mean no POST screen :| It was completely dead for 10 minutes. Then disconnected the drives and it worked. Connected them again and it still worked. It wasn't obvious at all that the cables had become loose..

First time I had problems with these cables were a week or two after I bought the computer, when a cable unplugged itself - the interface design is bloddy crap and it puzzles me why no one noticed it during testing/production and even early production :|