Hardware problem or virus?

[vaughan]

My XP2000+ has developed the following ailments and I'm wondering if this could be a hardware issue or the result of a virus or worm attack. Advice needed.
1. Gomez Peer has been triggering Java errors and re-starts about every 3 hours. The error says Java has caused an error and will re-start.
2. Hard drive is 80 Gb WD and is about 50% full. Opening Windows Explorer takes much longer than usual - several seconds to display directory contents. This used to be much quicker response.
3. I emptied IE6 temp files, ran AdAware 6 and Spybot Search and Destroy, defragged using Diskeeper registered version and re-booted with chkdsk /f option.
4. Now this computer randomly crashes. I'd be in the middle of writing an e-mail or a Word document and whoosh, black screen, computer re-starts.
5. Latest symptom - note things are deteriorating here! - when it rebooted it went to the Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking etc screen. I selected Start Windows Normally and when I clicked on my User Name to enter Windows (XP Pro Sp1) it gave a warning that my AVG 7 (registered AVG version - Anti Virus Grisoft) was not loaded. When I said load it the computer re-booted.
6. Much worse - it refused to boot, even Safe Mode bombed out.
7. Critical - I tried using the WinXP-PE CD and booting from that and running a Restore. This gave various errors.:
<windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe not found
then,
nv4_disp.dll pagefault in nonpaged area Stop 0x0000007E with a Blue Screen
then,
i386\ntkrnlmp.exe error 4
followed by,
D1 driver_IRQL not less or equal

Help :(

[NeoGen]

I must say, I never saw such huge combination of errors. The most I saw was 3 or 4 of those in a friend of mine's computer when his hard drive was about to go...
He also had lots of windows errors, blue screens, etc. We tried to format (quick format) the hard drive and reinstall windows but it even failed on the windows installation. We only spotted the problem when we tried a good old loooong hard drive format (took almost an hour) and in the end reported several bad sectors.

[Bionic_Redneck]

I like that java caused an error message. Should be more like microsoft windows caused an error. :roll:

My advice is fdisk the whole disk or try that knoppix disk you were talking about if you still get errors then you know it's hardware related and not windows fault

[jlangner]

If you get an error that NTOSKRNL not found:
Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD.
At the first R=Repair option, press the R key
Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the installation of Windows you want to repair.
Typically this will be #1
Change to the drive that has the CD ROM.
CD i386
expand ntkrnlmp.ex_ C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe
If WindowsXP is installed in a different location, just make the necessary change to C:\Windows
Take out the CD ROM and type exit

[jlangner]

Bad RAM can cause corruption as well, if others solutions fail, run a mem test.

[vaughan]

Thanks for the input team.

:arrow: Bad RAM was the problem.

My local computer shop swapped HDDs with one known to be working OK. Still got the problems. Then he removed one of the 2x 256MB DDR333 chips and it worked. Replaced with a new stick of RAM and I'm back in business.