Windows XP won't boot... not even from CD!

[OHGiant]

Everything had been working fine for over a year, and the other day I installed an automatic update for Windows XP, then rebooted my computer and left for work. When I came home, the computer was frozen on the login screen. I tried rebooting and it brought me to the screen where I could choose boot options like “Last known configuration that worked”, “Safe mode”, etc. No matter which boot option I chose, the boot process froze almost immediately. I tried booting from the Windows XP CD, and most of the time the computer would freeze before even getting to the welcome screen on the CD! I finally got the welcome screen and tried to repair via the recovery console, but it failed miserably. I even ran the diagnostic tools that came with my WD hard drive and no errors were found. At this point I gave up and reformatted the hard drive using the CD and reinstalled Windows.

Upon reinstalling Windows, everything seemed to be working fine. That was yesterday… Today I woke up and the computer was frozen. I rebooted and now it gave an error message like “Windows could not boot because the following file is missing or corrupt: \windows\system32\config\system”. Once again, I tried booting from the CD, but now I can’t even get to the welcome screen at all! I have no idea what is going on. My feeling is that the hard drive is going bad and somehow spontaneously corrupting system files. But why wouldn’t the diagnostic tools tell me if the hard drive is going bad? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here is my hardware:

Athlon XP 2100+
ASUS A7V333 motherboard
768 MB Crucial DDR
WD 80GB 7200 RPM hard drive
Lite-On CD-R/DVD combo
Radeon 8500LE 64MB video
SB Live sound

[Beemer]

At what point does it stop booting?

Cheers!

[tchang]

....I feel bad for what u've been through, I was thinking about the possible of hardware failure, the only things that i can think of cuasing all the troubles would be HDD or ur Ram, well...maybe not the Ram, but I just suspect that Ram might creat some kinda of errors, try to get a HDD from bestbuy and install windows on it and run, see if u still encounter those problems. I wish I can give more suggestions, and good luck

[noprob]

Here is a link I hope will assist you in your quest.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm

I'm sure there are many other links of this type,but this one seemed to fit the bill.
I myself am a win98 user tho I'm sure before it's all said & done I will end up on XP myself.
Regards.