Locked out!

[DSL-Dave]

Last night I found my XP Pro desktop sitting with a moveable cursor on a
black screen.
Rebooting showed:
Loading Personal Settings...
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Stop: 0x0000000a (0xffbdff80, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x804fb488
Begin Phys mem dump.

Safe Mode:
system32\Drivers\ntfs.sys missing or corrupt.

Tried Last Known Good - no good.
When booting, GoBack is still available. Tried reverting 1day (when it
worked) - no good.
Tried debugging mode:
"Loading Personal Settings...
Started OK. Hung after 30 seconds. Couldn't ctrl/alt/del - no cursor.

Debugging Mode - 2nd attempt:
NTFS.SYS - missing or corrupt.

3rd. attempt - setupdd.sys could not be loaded.

Recovery Console: dac2w2k.sys is corrupted.

In desperation, I tried booting from original disk.
Got error - file acpi.sys is corrupt.

Hardware appears to be OK (tried re-flashing BIOS for the heck of it - no
change)
Will boot to an A: prompt, but won't find C: drive.

I'm at my wits end (with apologies to Dungeon).
I'm willing to try almost anything (except reformatting HD using DOS and
re-installing!)

Last note: I installed SP2 last week...

Thanks in advance, and sorry this is so long...

 

[Guest]

I would check your RAM. I had some faulty RAM give me similar errors.

 

[DSL-Dave]

Thanks,

I'll try that later today!

------
Dave

I would check your RAM. I had some faulty RAM give me similar errors.

 

[DSL-Dave]

Thanks,

I'll try that later today!

Indeed, the problem was a defective 256 MB stick. Fortunately, I had three
in the system, so by removing the defective part, I'm back up and running.
As we speak, I am doing a new backup!
Now to see if Crucial will replace the baddie...

Dave