[vista_must_die]

Dear readers; how are you going?

I was given a Dell 8300 desktop a while back. For the last few months upon startup thyere has been a svchost.exe dialogue box that I generally closed and it all went as usual.

Then the numlock key came on upon startup, and in the bios the option to turn 'numock' on was 'on', even though I never chose this option.

NOW ... it starts and as the "windows is starting" page is up there is a warning box:

"winlogon.exe - Application Error: The instruction at 0x76fdd1fc" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "read"."

OK terminates, cancel debugs ... neither does anything but this next very similar message comes up:

"svchost.exe - Application Error: The instruction at 0x76fdd1fc" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "read"."

same thing with ok aqnd cancel as the options and neither does anything .... then comes the bluescreen without booting up.

Does anyone have any idea about this ... unfortunately the hard drive has some very important research articles (murphy's law). I have the setup disk from Dell (sp1 only)!! so why cant it request files from that like win 98 used to?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!