Well, it first looked like a virus attack with CapsLock/NumLock/ScrollLock lights blinking on and off. One restart yields in "C:\Windows\System32\hal.dll" missing. 1. Tried to reinstall XP. After loading all necessary files (File System etc.), when it says "Windows is starting now" where I'd expect to start copying files - the blue screen appears "A problem has occurred and windows has been shut down.. STOP: 0x0000007B ( ..,...,...) " 2. I tried the BartPE live CD to laod,,but when the black screen of Windows loading appears(the scrolling bar below), it again freezes with same msg. I really didn't expect a LiveCD to fail. 3. Puppy Linux LiveCD luckily works. started the computer, saw all HDD data intact. In order to get rid of possible viruses, I deleted all the partitions of the disk. 4. Tried BartPE, Windows Setup again but the same blue screen persists. Even with an empty HDD, how can it be possible. There was no new devices plugged in as you may have remembered. it all started from normal regular computing and a seeming virus attack. Can anyone please have any advise what can I do?

This sounds like you have a problem with your RAM, try runing memtest86 and reporting the results (memtest is avalible as a cd/floppy download and is also included with a lot of linux live cd's) also what are the specs/how old is your machine?

mine is a fairly new (bought 6 months ago) laptop: Compaq presario CQ40 Celeron 2.0 GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 120 GB HDD, WLAN,..)