So I come back to my computer after dinner and Firefox has crashed. As I send in the crash report my computer hangs, blue screens and restarts.

Blue screen and restart when I try Last Known Good or Safe Mode.

When I try my XP CD, when I get to loading the recovery console it bluescreens. I get:

STOP 0x00000024 (0x001902F8, 0xF7B8E704, 0xF7B8E404, 0xF739C411)

ntfs.sys == address F739C411 base at F732E0006 DateStamp 3b7dc5d0

Online searches indicate that I should try to fix the disk with CHKDSK but how should I do that if I can't even load the recovery console?! Please help, I have a big presentation to give tomorrow. :(

P.S. Typing this from an Ubuntu live CD, which seems to be able to mount the NTFS partition just fine. In read-only mode of course.

Oh yeah, I should mention that before running Ubuntu I ran MemTest 86 and I think one of my RAM sticks has gone bad. Lots and lots of errors. Things pass now that I have removed the newer RAM stick. Although it has been installed for 10 months, I think so it's weird that it would fail now.

Do you have access to a second Windows machine you could put the drive in? NTFS support in Linux isn't very good, and I've never heard of a Linux utility that can repair NTFS partitions. Maybe back your files up using Ubuntu and then reinstall Windows?

Buying a new drive, installing Windows on it, and then recovering the files you can might be the safest bet, really.

Yeah... this is just an inconvenient time for it all!

Searching through the web I see mention of loading from Windows 2000 boot disks without ntfs.sys and then running chkdsk (which doesn't require ntfs.sys). Unfortunately I don't have Windows 2000. Or even four floppy disks.

if you have a spare windows machine and your Windows XP disk, download this *Ultimate Boot CD for Windows* and build a boot CD from it. It's a "windows xp booting from CD" kit that contains many tools that will let you fix the disk from a GUI. The website has complete instructions for building the disk and it's pretty darn simple for those of us that follow directions well (and being able to play ubuntu puts you in the realm of the "well qualified" I'd think)

disclaimer is correct, do it now before it gets worse. before I bought my macbook, I was regularly having to boot my old XP box from CDs. it sucked, hard.

windows NT crashed
I am the blue screen of death
no one hears your screams