Windows won't boot, gives an unreadable blue screen on startup

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First post! I've read TechSpost for a while now to help with problems, but unfortunately this problem I am having does not seem to have been covered already. So... hey guys!

For the past few days my pc has been randomly crashing, ie. hanging then needed to be turned off at the power because it is unresponsive, especially when playing games (mainly Counter-Strike Source) or using Reaper (audio software similar to Cubase/ProTools). On restart, it kept running chkdsk on my E:\ drive (a partition containing an unused install of XP in case my main C:\ installation is unaccessible).

Today, a warning kept popping up about C:\$Extend\UsnJrnl is not able to be written to or something, and told me to run chkdsk, and after a minute or two, the pc froze again. Now, whenever I try to boot into my main C:\ install of windows, it blue screens before it even gets to the login screen, and when I try and boot into my spare install on the E:\ drive, it says hal.dll is missing. I don't even have the error code because the BSOD only remains on screen for a split second, then my pc restarts.

So, I tried to boot from my XP CD to perform a repair, but it doesn't offer the option of repairing. It doesn't even recognise my C:\ drive as an install of Windows; it just thinks it is an unknown partition. When I try to install another copy of Windows to boot into, it tells me that the C:\ drive is unrecognised and must be formatted before I can install Windows, which I don't want to do because I'll almost definitely lose everything then.

The C:\ drive is the whole of a 500gb HD, and the E:\ drive is a 5gb partition on an 80GB HD. There is also a D:\ drive on the 80gb which contains the C:\ installs page file.

Any ideas?

EDIT - I disabled restart on system failure so I could get the STOP code, which is 0x00000024 - this has been covered in this thread here already: techspot.com/vb/topic5352.html

I will try and resolve my problem using the answers in that thread as well.
 
My guess: Hard drive failure or video graphics card failure, but I am betting you have a bad hard drive.
Disconnect all hard drives but one, and change your jump to Master. See if it will boot.
Do not attempt a new install if you have data that must be rescued.
Your partitions will make it difficult to test. Any chance you can buy or borrow anther drive to test?
 
raybay said:
My guess: Hard drive failure or video graphics card failure, but I am betting you have a bad hard drive.
Disconnect all hard drives but one, and change your jump to Master. See if it will boot.
Do not attempt a new install if you have data that must be rescued.
Your partitions will make it difficult to test. Any chance you can buy or borrow anther drive to test?

I didn't think of my graphics card... But why would it make my C.\ install of XP unbootable? I'll disconnect it and give it a go.
I've tried both the hard drives on their own but still the same problems.
I am not attempting any more new installs.
I have spare hard drives, so if taking out the gpu does not work I will try a different HD.
 
ok, all sorted

i managed to log in to my second xp install in the recovery console and i ran chkdsk on c:\ and it fixed it :)
 
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