XP Pro Bad Pool Caller, etc -- what happened?? (Long-ish)

[chuck]

Daughter brought her DELL laptop with XP Pro SP2
over last week. Would not boot from HD. Got this error
message:

File Missing or Corrupt
c:\windows\system32\config\system

Put in XP Pro boot CD and tried to boot to repair or
reinstall. Got this message:

BAD_POOL_CALLER
STOP: )X000000C2

Found I could boot from DELL Diagnostics disk, but
only into a DOS box. So I copied the file
c:\windows\system32\config\system from another PC
onto a CD and copied it onto the laptop. Still
won't boot from HD, but now I can boot from XP boot
CD and reinstall XP. Whew!!! All is well. I hope.

What happened??? What caused all that mess? Is it
likely to happen again?

If whatever the problem is causes not to be able to boot
deom the CD, therefore not using the installed Windows on
the HD, is this a hardware/BIOS problem???

chuck

 

[Roberto]

Daughter brought her DELL laptop with XP Pro SP2
over last week. Would not boot from HD. Got this error
message:

File Missing or Corrupt
c:\windows\system32\config\system

Put in XP Pro boot CD and tried to boot to repair or
reinstall. Got this message:

BAD_POOL_CALLER
STOP: )X000000C2

Found I could boot from DELL Diagnostics disk, but
only into a DOS box. So I copied the file
c:\windows\system32\config\system from another PC
onto a CD and copied it onto the laptop. Still
won't boot from HD, but now I can boot from XP boot
CD and reinstall XP. Whew!!! All is well. I hope.

What happened??? What caused all that mess? Is it
likely to happen again?

If whatever the problem is causes not to be able to boot
deom the CD, therefore not using the installed Windows on
the HD, is this a hardware/BIOS problem???

chuck

Likely a corrupt registry, see MS Article ID: 307545 for a possible fix

rgds
Roberto