My system as purchased on 9/21/2004:

Dimension 8400, 32 bit, Pentium 4 Processor 540 (3.2 GHz) w/HT Tech and 1MB cache.

1 GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533 MHz (512MB x 2, on DIMM 1 & 2).

Western Digital 250 GB Serial ATA Hard drive, 7200rpm (I believe 8 buffer)

SATA Operation: Raid Autodetect/ATA

I definitely have very little to no experience with troubleshooting and always relied on Dell's tech support when my computer had crashed, usually due to online virus infections.  Tech support has talked me through the re-installation of Windows operating system about 2-4 times (I was never really concerned with backing up personal data) using my system disks (Windows OS CD, drivers on Resource CD, Tools System CD, etc.).  After keeping my computer secured with real-time online virus protection since then, I have had zero problems with system operations since 2006.  Now that the warranty period has expired, I'm on my own and my system has recently crashed about a month ago.  The computer attempted to run checkdisk on its own, but I left that on and running all night (while asleep) and then all day while I was at work and saw very little to no progress, by the time I returned from work.  Turned the system on and off a few times with the same result of system running checkdisk, but it always seemed to be stalled with little or no progress.  Continued turning system on and off until finally receiving the blue screen error message concerning IRQL, with the black screen always showing the message that "windows system 32 config is missing or corrupted."

Without knowing any better, ordered a replacement Western Digital hard-drive with same specs (except this time with 16 buffer), re-arranged the boot sequence for system to boot from CD, created a partition to reflect d: would be the larger space, hit power off/down button to stop procedure, started over so that partition now reflected c: would be the larger space, moved forward by formatting the new hard-drive, windows set-up began copying files into installation folders at which time I experienced 2 error messages about "set-up could not copy file mf.sys" and one other similar message which I failed to record, skipped through the 2 errors to continue on, witnessed the Windows progress bar, and arrived at the set-up/installation screen informing it will be another 39 minutes from here.  At that point, the system crashed to blue screen with error message as follows:

STOP: 0X0000008E (0XC0000005, 0XBF87AE01, 0XF7A43B14, 0X00000000)

WIN32K.sys - ADDRESS 8f87AE01 base at BF800000, DATESTAMP 3d6de5e5.

 

Attempted to reformat and reinstall again, and this time when set-up was copying files to installation folders, I received the following 3 error messages:

1.) Cannot copy file: KODAK_dc.icm

2.) Cannot copy file: iyuv_32.dll

3.) Line 855 of HIVECLS.inf is corrupted.  Set-up cannot continue (hit F3 to quit).

After turning the computer on and off, received that same black screen message: "windows system 32 config system file is missing/corrupt.  Attempt to repair with original set-up CD."

I have been trying to read other posts to find an answer/guidance, similar to my problem but and have been unable to land upon it yet.  I apologize if this post is redundant to others, and would appreciate any feedback for my novice person, as I enter into a completely foreign adventure in trying to save the computer.

-Neil