Bizzare issues

[FMook]

I have a XP Pro system that is recovering from Dell
customer service. Needless to say, Dell screwed up and
blames Microsoft for it's hardware issues.

The OS has been reinstalled and patched. Now there is a
strange issue that has shown up after the SP1a has been
applied. This issue may or may not be related to SP1a, but
that is when I first noticed it.

Strange things start occuring after the machine is on for
a few hours. Generally it shows up while trying to install
software. Quite often I will start an install and watch it
crap out with a "unable to access file" and "file is in
use" error over some random temp install file. I can rerun
the installations (as myself or administrator) and get
random results each time. Many times, I simply cannot
install something because the failures are so frequent.

In addition, the registry, specifically the
HKEY_LOCAL_SOFTWARE becomes inaccessable via regedt32. For
unknown (to me) reasons, this key and set of sub keys
become inaccessible and cause an error when you try to
open it. The SOFTWARE file itself seems to be fine.

And finally, when all this happens, I get winsock
errors. "FATAL failed to initialize winsock" types of
messages when trying to use netdiag. Internet Explorer no
longer can resolve addresses. Netscape on the otherhand
works fine so I guess it is resolving addresses in a
different nethod that what MSIE does.

Does anyone have a clue as to what might be happening to
my possessed machine?

 

[FMook]

I assumed that this might be the case and I have tryed to
uninstall SP1a and that doesn't seem to correct the issue.
This seems to be something stranger than that. Because of
the randomness of the temp file inaccessibility and losing
of the SOFTWARE keys and Winsock, and I forgot to add
this, if I shut down the machine, I get the regular
shutdown messages, programs closing and so on, then at the
last moment when it should power off, it blue screens,
then shuts off. I will need stop action photography to
capture the message. I think it is similar to the BSD
(Blue Screen of Death) that I get when a CD has finished
it's burn. I can't really tell.

Under Dell's advice they suggest to clear out the NVRAM.
They don't tell you that you might have to reformat the
system and reinstall everything. If the system manages to
start again, then you can get to enjoy how Dell's POS
machine goes through various stages of forgetfulness as it
loses nic cards, drives, memory and so on. Once that
is "under control", formatting the drive seems plesant.
Needless to say, Microsoft seems aware of some of these
issues, but has nothing beyond a "fix" that should be in
the next service pack. Dell on the otherhand claims
ignorance, which is the first truthful thing they have
said.