So my PC finally kicked the bucket. Need some thoughts for purchasing decisions.

[Dr.Demento]

My old PC was:

mb: ASUS SLI nforce 500 KL9 Platimun series AMD
gfx: 2 Nvidia SLI 7600 GT 256MB PNY
cpu: AMD FX 3600x 2.4GHz
OS: XP Home
psu: 600WT Enermax
ram: 2GBs Corsair
sound: Audigy4 soundblaster

I've been having intermittent shutdown problems with my PC until it finally just quit booting altogether. It'll get hanged up at boot time now and turn off on it's own after about 20 second as if someone pulled the plug. I thought it was my PSU or UPS going out about a month ago and found out it was neither and the strange thing is that the CMOS/BIOS seems to load just fine and stay on.

I also just recently noticed a new error message at boot time "system32/kernl. missing" or something, but I wonder if that was simply caused by restarting Windows so many times after the PC shuts off in an attempt to toubleshoot that I invariably destoryed my partition? I don't see how this could be a virus though as this PC has never once graced an ethernet cable in the 4 years of it's entire lifespan and as a result, not much web surfing was done with it. I'm leaning towards a CPU or mb problem, but I really don't want it to be a HDD failure. That means I would have to dig up all my software CD keys again and reinstall everything. Plus I'll lose all my music and game data too.

So, I've already blown money towards a new PSU and that wasn't the issue. With the symtoms described above, what should I get now? I don't have alot of money to spend, so I need to narrow it down and get it right this time.

 

[Krynn72]

If the bios and such are loading, then it is indeed your hard drive. The error message only enforces the conclusion.

 

[Dr.Demento]

Dammit I hope you're wrong Krynn-dog. That would suck.

EDIT: Maybe it's an HDD controller problem though and not the HDD itself? I hope so. I could simply get an expansion if that's all it is. I have been hearing some loud mechanical noises lately, but I just assumed that was just one of my case fans going out or something. If it was the HD itself, why would it power off? Wouldn't Windows simply not load?

Again that's only if I leave it on the page with the "Windows will load in" countdown timer on the bottom and on the top that says, "We're sorry for the inconveinence but Windows failed to load blah blah".

Doesn't power off in CMOS.