Rediculous computer failure

[spanks]

Hey...
So I built a computer for my dad for father's day, and after rma'ing the hd and reinstalling windows it was working perfect...UNTIL yesterday when for work he needed adobe acrobat reader. It all started when acrobat reader 7 installer wouldn't download, it was getting an odd error. So, I download ver. 6, and update to version 7. It updates to 7.03 and 7.05 and then needs to restart. It restarts oddly, comes up to the desktop picture, but no taskbar or icons. I can ctrl alt delete, go to the shutdown menu and turn off the computer. I turn it back on and it updates to 7.08. It worked for the rest of the night and he turned it off. He turns it off this morning, and it goes to the same blank desktop screen. I shut it down, and turn it back on. It then starts up part way, reboots itself, starts up again to the desktop where Microsoft is now telling me that my already activated and validated and UPDATED version of XP home is not legit and that I am possibly the victim of counterfeiting blah blah blah. The computer is in a sorry state, as it is barely limping around and everything is crashing left and right. I turn off the computer and it will not get back to the desktop, it will not load in safe mode, and it is just plain broken. It goes through post, it gets to the windows screen with the little bar, and then it goes to a black screen.

Now this had happened once before, and I repaired the installation and it was working like new. This is pretty much the same thing that happened before. However it has been working for weeks since I repaired it, and the day I install adobe everything goes to hell. Now, how can adobe ruin everything? Am I SOL and have to repair windows again? My dad has hours of work on there that isn't backed up so a full reformat is not an option. Can some piece of hardware be doing this? I have never had a computer do this over and over again like this...something physical must be involved.

Any ideas why it would have done the same thing twice in a row, and what role Adobe could have played in this? Adobe is critical to my dad's work, and it was working perfect, and then bam I installed adobe and its broken ><.

Please help!!

 

[dmroeder]

I would test your memory and your hard drive for errors. Download Memtest86 to test your memory. Then download a utility from your hard drive manufacturers website and run that. It sounds like a bunch of windows files were corrupted.

What type of Virus/Spyware protection is on that rig?

 

[spanks]

well, it doesn't have spyware or viruses. It has mcaffe in it. It is mcaffe 8 for like businesses and stuff. It has the perpetual updates and such. I have ad aware SE and the windows defender basic on all of our computers.

It has 2 512 sticks of ram in it, and I tried each one individually.

Basically I need to get onto the computer and get his newest files out of it for his work. I cannot reformat it until I have those files. Any suggestions on how to get into it?

 

[fredweston]

Basically I need to get onto the computer and get his newest files out of it for his work. I cannot reformat it until I have those files. Any suggestions on how to get into it?

Can't you just put his HDD in another computer and copy the files off? Or boot off a live CD and copy them over the network or to a USB drive.

As already suggested, it would be prudent to actually test the memory with memtest86, not just swap it out as that gives no indication as to whether the memory is good or not. Also the HDD diagnostic is another good idea. Most manufacturers have an ISO that you can download and burn to a CD in order to run the diagnostics so it's pretty easy.