Thread: XP starts, but any task produces "Run a DLL as an App" msge followed by utter chaos!!

Please help! Last week I came back to my PC after a couple of months away from home to find that after XP starts it very soon crashes. It all begins with a message that says something about "Run a DLL as an App" and whatever I click in that box causes the screen to go blue and I get a Stop message and something about "dumping physical memory to disk"??!! Then the computer restarts but it won't go to any of the options (Safe Mode, last known good configuration, start Windows normally, etc). Instead, I get various messages, such as "page fault in non-paged area" or a different Stop message from the first time or "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM" or it asks me to do various things like "Run a system diagnostic utility/run a memory check/try changing video adapters". Obviously I can't do any of these things because I can't get to the desktop!! But to be honest, I wouldn't know what I was doing even if I could.

I'm afraid I don't know what motherboard I have, but this computer has always been so reliable in the past. The last time I checked (before I went away) there was at least 18% memory clear and I don't tend to visit sites that have dodgy stuff on them, although I do download stuff (mostly audiobooks) from uTorrent. I just don't know what to do, do you think my machine is basically fooked?!

I'd appreciate any help you can give me, but please be patient as I'm not experienced in this sort of thing. Fortunately I now have my PC set up next to my flatmate's, which has an active broadband connection, so am able to post here.

Cheers!!!

EDIT (15:17pm) I was finally able to get the tray to open so that I could put my Windows XP CD-ROM in, but it would only go so far before I got another blue screen saying "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to protect your system." There's a stop message, "STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0xF99BC5A7, 0xF95D59FC, 0x00000000)" but to be honest I've seen many variations on that already, each time the strings of numbers and letters are different. After that it said, "setupdd.sys address F99BC5A7 base at F999D000, datestamp 3d6dd67f." I don't understand a bit of that!! If I manage to get it to the screen where I have the option to start in safe mode, it just produces a long list of stuff like this: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS\system3 2\Drivers
\FONTS\vgaoem.fon
\AppPatch\drvmain.sdb etc, etc, etc

Try this.

Start XP click "Start/run" type in sfc /scannow (note the space is required)

let that run its course (you will probably be asked for you XP CD )

If that helps ... I would concider running it several times)

If that does not work you might have to do a repair install.
http://www.tastycomputers.com/suppor...airinstall.htm

Good luck.