STOP 0x00000024

So I upgraded my machine some 2 or 3 months ago, and have reinstalled XP about 6 times or so. I keep getting a bunch of different blue screen stop codes. I tried getting minidumps and full crash dumps, then opening on WinDBG and tried to figure out what the problem is, but I can't find anything consistent. (I've got all kinds of red herrings, like issues with the antivirus, usb camera drivers, ntfs.sys, etc).

So here are the main specs:
CPU: Intel E8400
MB: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
RAM: 2x1GB Patriot
HD: SATA 500 GB Seagate (OS, Main), IDE 300 GB Maxtor (Backup)

Obviously, latest drivers, XP SP3, etc. I've ran MemTest86 for nights in a row, no issues.

So yesterday Windows Live FileShare crashed on me, and the machine wouldn't boot, showing a BSOD with the STOP 0x00000024 error (yet again). I looked up online, and most references pointed to the ntfs.sys file. So, I booted with my Linux SLAX CD, and tried to rename/remove the file and copy it from the WinXP installation disc. SLAX said it couldn't delete the file (I guess renaming in Linux is a copy-then-delete method).

Crap. (I have a suspicion this is related to BioShock's DRM with the SecuROM method, since my hard drive shows crap even on Linux and can't open some folders where SecuROM is installed).

So I rebooted from XP, see if I could get anywhere, and now I got a "NTLDR is missing" before windows even started.

That's really bad.

So I thought: "ok, let's bite the bullet and either run the recovery console, or reinstall WinXP AGAIN."

So I booted with the XP CD, and it showed my 500GB drive as "free space".

Not good. I didn't backup everything!

So I said, ok, maybe the SATA drive is bad, so let's install it to my trusty 300GB IDE drive. I did and then rebooted.

As the first part of the XP installation finished, the machine rebooted and ran a CHKDSK on the D:\ drive (which now is the SATA, the bad one). It found and corrected a bunch of errors (like 15 or so). Then the second part of the XP installation began.

At this point I thought: "Ok, I don't really want to lose my non-backed files, so maybe the SATA drive is better?!?". So i turned off the machine while XP install was waiting on me to begin the second phase.

I rebooted, and chose the SATA drive as the boot drive...

And it works like nothing ever happened.

The corrupt files on the c:\found.000 folder were MP3 files, so I did have a backup of those.

So we'll see what happens next on this saga...