System specs:
Windows XP Professional
AMD Athlon Dual Core 2 GHz
TFORCE TF7025-M2 Mobo
Geforce 275 GTX
2GBs Corsair DDR2 ram
Westell 250 GB HDD
The situation so far:
Randomly my desktop started hard freezing, no mouse movement, no keyboard activity you name it. Then after resetting, it started giving me various warnings during boot to windows, the most common was, "\windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupted. try to repair etc..." and a lsass.exe error which wasn't as common. I found this fix
LINK but instead of going through that first, I read about how some usb devices could also cause the problem. Only two new things were connected to the rig recently, a wired 360 controller and a usb printer. So I unplugged those first and everything booted fine, then after about 15 mins or so the desktop hard froze again, and the same system and lsass.exe corrupt errors occurred.
So I figured what the hell, I'll just do a clean install of windows, it's been about a year since I did it last might as well, and everything was going fine until after about a day and windows reinstalling SP3 it crapped again. Same freeze, same corrupt errors. Now only things plugged into the usb slots are my keyboard and mouse.
I then decided to attempt the linked fix by going through the XP recovery console. After fighting through it to do the registry file swipe, I finally get it done. Now the desktop "seemed" ok, until I attempted to install my wireless card. Now I receive a "The InstallShield Engine (iKernel.exe) could not be launched. The RPC Server is unavailable" error. I've searched and found this fix
LINK, there's two options in the link and neither work. There is no dcom service in services and going through the dcomcnfg option, it closes when I double click computers. I was going to try a registry wiper but the lack of installing has halted movement.
Right now I have the machine running on idle since I can't install anything, waiting to see if it hard freezes again. I would do another clean install of windows but I'm sure it would just continue this cycle leading me back to this point, as it has twice now. What I'm interested in is figuring out exactly where and what the problem is. I can't hammer down if it's hardware or software. I'm on the fence on whether I should just give up on the rig and piecemeal together a new box. Although the concern is I'm not sure what device or devices may be dying and I would be doing a lot for nothing. A friend is pushing that the PSU is pretty much shitting the bed, I'm not so sure since nothing has pointed me in that direction.
Anyone experience anything like this or has any more tips I'd greatly appreciate it, it's been about 6 days of head scratching and my scalp is getting raw.
Posts
The HDD failing had crossed my mind, as it's the oldest device, I think it's pushing 6 or 7 years old, that's typically the life cycle for most of my hard discs.
You could probably get away with just replacing the SYSTEM file instead of doing the full instructions, but if you need them that page shows the entire process
PSN - MicroChrist
I'm too fuckin' poor to play
WordsWFriends - zeewoot
Anyways everything says replace the SATA cable (I did) and if the problem continues replace the drive, so that's an easy fix but I figure if the box is going to be down and out for a while I might as well test everything I can.
Thanks guys you were a big help.