okay i'll try to expalin my problems in full and see if anyone can fathom them out. i'm usually pretty good at problem sovling but this has my stumped (possibly guessing the mobo) my pc started doing disk checks on boot up and freezing at the disk check. but on some occasions loaded to windows and everything was fine. then the other day i got a .sys file missing error so reinstalled windows (clean install) on a different hard disk. the same problem is now occuring. also my computer stutters every 8 seconds it lags for 1 second. when i power on my pc it either gives me the sytem file missing error. or takes about 3 mins to load. I have potentially rulled out the drives because i have 2 sata drives and one ide. i have installed windows on all 3 and each does the same thing. also when my pc does boot to windows i get a new hardware found which contains radom characters and symbols. And fails to install. one of my cd rom drives is missing in my computer. As this problem seems to be affecting all 3 drives i was assuming its the mobo. anyway for me to check etc? mobo is a asus a7n8x-e delux many thanks sim Athlon xp 2500+ @2.17 pc 3200 512mb ram radeon 9200se win xp home oem

Sorry, Just playing around with my moderator powers... I've been sleeping.

lol ok any chance of some help please :D Athlon xp 2500+ @2.17 pc 3200 512mb ram radeon 9200se win xp home oem

Sounds like hardrive failure to me? Tt Lanfire MSI K8N Diamond AMD64 3000+'Venice' 1gb pc4400 OCZ Powerstream 520w 6600GT WDCaviar 160gb sata WDCaviar 160gb sata ;~}

I would be inclined to test the RAM. Whenever anybody with computer problems asks me "Can bad ram cause..." I stop them there and say yes because whatever follows could be caused by a faulty stick of ram. Hope this helps

ram must be faulty coz its a clear case of hardware malfunctioning...u need to check ur ram.... till then keep rockin