UPDATE - I think it may be bad sectors and it keeps writing to them. Anyway, i did the repair install, it messed up the first 2 times, then the 3rd time it worked, then when i restarted once it came up with missing/corrupted windows\system32\config\system file again. I did the recover console and deleted it then copied in the recovery file. XP booted up fine, its working right now and im on it. Shall i run a scandisk to detect the bad sectors and fix them? and will reformating eliminate the bad sectors?