Verification of copied files fails

(PC details at bottom of posting)

I am hoping to get some help on a data corruption problem. I have been having problems with files becoming corrupted on my harddrive. The problem is most obvious when installing the OS or software applications. Sometimes the files extracted from the cabs can't be located during installation and the installation fails. Other times installation is successful, but strange problems can occur like applications needing to shut down or the PC restarting itself. I tried several CD-ROMs thinking the problem might be on that side, but saw the problems on all. It seems like whenever data is written to the disk there is an opportunity for corruption.

I have run memory tests (Windows Memory Diagnostic from MS, and MemTest86+) and the CHKDSK utility in Windows and everything looks good. Lately the system is getting so unstable that restores from earlier restore points have not fully restored reliability. This is a completely clean system free from viruses, spyware, etc.

I am planning to reinstall the OS from scratch (for the 10th? time), possibly to a new HDD, so I made a backup of my "profiles" using the Microsoft backup utility. Here's where things get interesting. I asked it to "verify" in the wizard and as a result, the verification fails. I am saving the backup file to the local disk (there is just one in the system). If I do this ten times I might get a good verification one time and 9 bad verifications. Each time it fails, it fails on a different file. It seems to be random. It seems like I have a HDD problem or maybe something on my motherboard or cpu like cache memory problem.

Is there any kind of diagnostic test that I can do that can determine if the problem is the HDD, motherboard, or cpu without resorting to swap-tronics and lots of new extra parts laying around?

Thanks for any help or ideas...
Bryan


OS: Windows XP-SP2
CPU: Celeron 2.6GH 478P 128k
Mother Board: Imperial GV TG313757
HDD: Western Digital 40GB 5400rpm
Memory: 2X 256MB DDR 2100

 

Solved it! Feel like a MORON. Turns out my two memory modules were different speeds. I guess the memory check tests don't detect that...