Right just to start off I'll give some info on the system as it is not my usual one.
It is a Mesh PC about 2-3 years old
MOBO Asus P5N E SLI version 1.xx
Intel core 2 duo E6600
Balistix 2GB RAM working Did have 4GB but in trying to fix have found 1 stick gives long beep at POST so left just 1 pair in.
320GB Seagate HD with Vista Home premium OS
320GB WD HD for files
256MB nVidia GeForce 7600GT PCI-E
Sound blaster X-Fi.
PSU Corsair HX620W (brand new)
Things started to go wrong when we had a prolonged brown-out several months ago. At the time I thought I had solved it with a change of mem sticks. I had 4 sticks of Balistix as matched pairs, The faulty ones I replaced with another pair from Crucial (excellent company by the way)
in January.
About the end of May the PC would reboot for no apparent reason but always restarted OK. The frequency of reboots started to increase so I thought I am need of a new PSU. I had a lot of USB devices hanging off it so changed the generic 420W PSU for a 620W Corsair model. I looked at the temps and voltages and all were in tolerance. I checked for driver updates and have got Vista SP2 every thing up to date. It had been running for about 16hrs with no problems when it last tried to reboot itself. This time it said that it had shut down for a critical error and could not restart. I tried roll backs and repairs but each time I got error messages such as 'startrep.exe 0x74992738 cannot find ref mem @ 0x00000004 or rstrui.exe 0x74162738 ref mem @ 0x00000004.
The only references I could find talked about registry errors. I've never touched the registry files 'cause I know things can go very pear shaped if you delete the wrong things.
I have a regular back up schedule on a networked external HD but this is not much good when you can't even boot.
Anyway the state I am in at the moment is as much a suprise as anything.
I put the recovery CD I got from Mesh into the drive, thinking I would do a Vista reinstall and tried to boot, there was a little activity but the CD never ran up to speed (it is set as first device in boot chain) then believe it or not normal bootup took place. It is running at the moment and my son has been playing WoW off and on for the best part of 7hours (He tells me he is raiding and has too keep logged in).
I am in total confusion any guidance would be welcome.
One thing I forgot to mention was on a few occasions the boot would get to the windows progress bar and just sit there. Well 2 things actualy every time I tried a restart the POST test beeb would be correct i.e. 1 short.

Hello Anthony, welcome back to PCHF!

I will mark your thread as open and hopefully one of our great techs will be with you soon.

Thanks or your patience

Smokeycheech

hi anthony ,

you can try running sfc to repair the errors ,

put your vista cd in the drive.

type CMD in the run/search box on vista and right click the cmd icon and select run as administrator

at the command prompt type sfc /scannow ( with a space between sfc and the /)

let it finish scanning your files , if it finds any errors it should repair them ,

hope this helps

BBJ

Hi! BBJ, just tried what you said it took about a nano second and ended back at C:\windows\system32> it didn't appear to scan anything.
above this prompt was a series of comands such as scanfile, veryifonly,verifyfile, which asks me for the full file path name. I don't have a win vista disc only the recovery disc supplied by Mesh.
on my screen it shows,'sfc /scannow' rather than 'sfc/ scannow' as the command
I have tried this way and it now appears to be working (unlike my brain) at least it is scanning. I now know why we have windows rather than DOS. I'll let you know what the outcome is. Many thanks for the pointer.

BBJ,
The result was, 'Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.' I'll leave it running and see what happens. Speak to you later.

Failed after about 20 hrs. In the log it says this was 1) caused by windows - reported. 2) caused by Adobe viewer - get updates. I have upgraded to Adobe reader ver 9 but cannot see how to upgrade Adobe viewer.

BBJ. Just to let you know the crashes seem to have stopped. With Vista SP2 and all drivers bang up to date. Why,I don't understand, but I took the step of unplugging all the USB devices and swapping them to different locations, this caused the software to reinstall all USB drivers and apart from one BSOD caused by Windows itself, I have had no crashes for 6 days now. PC is on 24/7.