I have 2 problems at the moment.. not sure if they are related. I have suddenly developed a boot problem. I have recently I installed LG4082 DVD burner, including DVD-RAM, and Nero 6.0. I have also installed an extra 512m of memory. The boot problem is 'Load needed dlls for kernel'. I can get the machine to boot eventually after a couple of attempts. According to Miscosoft knowledge base Q326671 "This issue may occur if the Hal.dll and Ntoskrnl.exe files are mismatched. To resolve this issue, start your computer from the Windows CD, and then perform an in-place upgrade of Windows" OK so far, but before reinstalling I thought it best do a back up. Problem #2. When I try to use the XP backup software (which I have used every couple of weeks before) it fails and I get this error message: “Error returned while creating the volume shadow 80042301.” One thing to note is when I installed the LG DVD burner, as part of the DVD-RAM driver suite, it installed a prog. called RAMASST.exe which is described under its properties as something like "CD Burning of Windows XP disabling tool for DVD". It runs on start up. Anyone any ideas please as to how to resolve this? I'd really like to take an up to date backup before I do anything drastic like reinstall XP. Thanks

If it were my machine i'd....Take out all the stuff i just added and starrt with memory...if that works then go with the dvd drive..dont install a bunch of crap with it...it will just work.... on backups.... i'd manually burn a cd with the files i need. good luck...

Thanks for the advise. I'm going to do just that. I'll copy everything I need to a Cd-RW and go back to where I was a couple of weeks ago. Then try installing stuff gradually!