Suggestions requested re: blue screen of death

[samp]

Hi,

Well July 1st (Canada Day here in the cold country) greeted me with the blue screen of death on my desktop...aaarrrrgh.  It has happened twice before with the result of reloading the OS and all the attendant hassles.  But last time was over 2 years ago...

Computer is running XP Home and when turned on begins to boot only to display the blue screen and the message as follows:

Unmountable_boot_volume

Technical data
xxxStop:0x000000ED (0x8174FE30, 0xC0000032, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

If I try to boot using F8 and safe mode it does the same thing every time.

One time though I got the following message:
File missing or corrupt
<Windows Root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.

Is there anything I can try other than an OS reload...Can I replace this file from the Windows disc I have (which is the original purchased copy)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as always.

Happy July 4th
Samp

[DaveLembke]

The hard drive might be on its way out. I would suggest downloading a utility and buring it to CD such as Seagates Seatools or Maxtors bootable diagnostic CD and run tests on the drive. If it comes up healthy hardware wise then do you think you could have been hit with a virus that attacked the kernel etc?

[Broni]

...or RAM...

If you have more than one RAM module installed, try starting computer with one RAM stick at a time.
If you have only one RAM stick installed...
...run memtest: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic62524.html

[samp]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I will try these and see where it goes.

Much appreciated once again.

samp