I have a 40gb h/d. It used to boot ok, but after about 30secs would freeze & then need about 10 reboots and/or 5 mins to run properly. I used Norton Systemworks to do all the tests I could think of, and also turned it off to check all the internal connections, but no difference. It might have been something to do with temperature, cos once the CPU warmed up, it seemed to boot OK. Finally last week it stopped booting altogether, coming up with the message "Corrupt file Windows\system32\config\system". Try repairing with orig cd. I did this, (FIXMBR etc), but not being sure of what I was doing, didn't get it fixed. I've got loads of important data on the drive, so I didn't want to reformat. I ran the installation CD again, and installed another copy of XP, figuring that if I could get a copy of XP to work on the drive, I might be able to get in & backup the important data onto cd. This version of XP worked, but I couldn't get access to the files I needed. I could get at other files on the drive, but there didn't seem to be rhyme or reason as to why I could access some files in a folder but not others. I think I got something like msblast or gaobot when I connected to the internet to get the virus updates for Norton. I've been into regedit and removed msblast, and been into services.msc, but I can't get Properties in RPC to open to allow me to stop the autoshut down. I figured that the drive itself was possibly faulty, so I bought another hard drive and installed xp onto it. This second drive was working fine, but now if I boot it from HDD0, I get the message "Error loading operating system". If I boot from CD it just hangs. In summary: The original drive, now has 2 copies of XP on it. 1 copy gives me the message "Corrupt file Windows\system32\config\system" 2 copy gives me a "NT authority\ system RPC Termination" message The new drive gives me "error loading operating system" or it just hangs from CD boot. Suggestions anyone? Thanks Sorry this message is so long. (Moderator, edit as necessary)

Try to remove the Blaster worm before your RPC shuts down using this: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.removal.tool.html and then right away apply this patch: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?amp;displaylang=en&familyid=2354406C-C5B6-44AC-9532-3DE40F69C074&displaylang=en Hopefully now you will be able to back up your data so you can reformat.

Thanks for your post, Artem. Unfortunately, RPC kicks in before the removal tool can complete.

on your desktop select start, run and type shutdown -a hopefully this should stop shutdown procedure so you can remove blaster. hope this helps

Thanks very much, Obi - you're well named. The relief when the string worked was fantastic - drive now set up again - just need to get into the important file now - when I try to open it, the message "file not accessible. Access is denied". Are there some settings somewhere that will stop me getting access? Could it have something to do with my user name/settings on XP? I think I'm set up as an administrator.

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/indexwinxp.htm this is really useful site, hope you can find something here to help you. maybe overlaying new copy of xp will prevent access to files underneath in original install. or maybe need to make boot disk if getting boot problems. sorry can't help further