Hi all,

I've been trying to fix my girlfriend's parent's PC today but haven't got very far. I was just wondering if you guys could take a look at the problem and see if there's anything you think I could have tried.

THe problem was simple: The PC wouldn't start. Every time it tried it would just restart and take you to the "Windows did not start properly" screen with the options of Safe Mode etc. Whatever option I chose, the PC would reboot before it ever hit the Windows logo. I knew his PC was partitioned into two drives. C: had Windows, D: had his work etc. So that meant I could format C: quite happily. So that's what I did and I started installing Windows. Unfortunately it got so far and then gave me some "could not read file" errors. I gave me the option of skipping the file and trying to continue but there seemed to be a lot of files with issues.

After this failed install it would let me into Windows but all I would have is a blank desktop. I could then use the task manager to load what little was there but a lot of the type I got an error telling me that "C:\$Mft is corrupted or damaged".

I've tried running chkdsk with the /r flag and it will find and supposedly fix errors but I am still having these problems.

Can anyone think of anything I have missed? I'm thinking it just sounds like a duff hard drive.

By the way, not sure if it matters but I can still seem to see his work on the D: drive. That looks OK.

In my experience the Ram is faulty, see if you can get your hands on replacement piece of Ram (see if you can borrow from a friend or another PC with compatible ram), of course make sure it is the correct type (SD, DDR or DDRII). Then you will need to reinstall windows, I think you will find that you will no longer get the can not read files errors.