Hi everybody, I was led to your forum after watching one of your vids on YouTube about this problem. I decided to post here rather than start a new topic - hope I've got that right.
I looked at all the information about this problem, both here and in many other places, and decided that since I had nothing that really mattered on my PC I'd fix it the easy way. I did a full format and reloaded XP Pro. Problem solved - or so I thought.
After less than 24 hours on a practically clean install (all I had done was install Firefox, Avast and cpu-z) it started happening again. Now sometimes it boots ok and sometimes it stops with the /windows/system32/config/system message.
This leads me to think its a hardware problem. I have seen vague references to the hdd, the ram and even the psu in various places but nothing definite.
If anybody can give me an idea of where it will be best to start checking hardware - or any other suggestions you have - I'd be very grateful.

I'm not sure exactly what system specs would be helpful so here's all of it:-
AMD Phenom II 945 3.0 Ghz
MSI K9N2 Platinum
XFX 8800GTX
4Gb Corsair PC2-6400
Asus DVD-RW
Thermaltake 650W