Well it is over! My computer completely crashed this morning after I got another error message that I could not load devmgr.dll and after I downloaded procmon.exe I went ahead and cleaned out the prefetcher and also cleaned out the temp files and then rebooted.

It would not even boot. No safe mode. No Last Good Configeration. Nothing.

Can't even boot off of a floppy.

Keeps rebooting over and over with same screen that Windows cannot load normally. The screen that gives you the all the options. Keeps reappearing over and over.

It took me a couple of times just to get into the bios as it showed the keyboard was not working. Finally I got into there so at least I can reformat.

I must have a corrupt registry.

I am going to go with Windows ME. At least I understand that operating system.

The biggest bummer is that I lost Word. I don't have another copy so now I have to go hunt one down.

Many thanks to all those who tried to assist me with my error messages! I do appreciate the time and effort.

Richard

you may find your current OS more functional than Windows ME. At least you could learn something from trying to fix WinXP 64


but seriously there are a few things i would like to point out:
if you cant get into the bios, boot off a floppy, or you have a keyboard problems at the bios level, that has NOTHING to do with the crashed OS
Last Known Good Configuration loads a backup copy of the registry so I doubt its a registry issue alone
You may be able to recover this installaion by doing a repair install from your XP64 CD (i dont usually recommend repairs but since a full reinstall of XP 64 would kill your copy of word it might be best to try that first)


As far as what you should reinstall, If you can run XP 64 you can run XP 32 and its a lot easier and more compatible. but installing Windows ME isn't just taking 2 steps back, its like taking 100 steps back. seriously its terrible.

If you just don't have another OS available other than ME, try http://www.ubuntu.com/, or any other linux distro for free. Hell, i wish i could legally give you one of our licenses of XP 32. Id do ii just to know that there was 1 less person out there using Windows ME.

Gotta agree with geek here - if you configure the BIOS to boot from floppy, you have a known good DOS or Win9x boot floppy, and THAT fails, it's not the fault of the OS...

Sounds like HDD corruption, because deleting the prefetch files and the temp files won't cause Windows to crash!

Unless there's a certain driver that I don't know of, AFAIK.

This may be caused by bad sectors. Please go to http://hddguru.com and get MHDD.

If you don't know how to use MHDD, please check the message board at http://hddguru.com

When MHDD has been launched and you selected the right HDD, by pressing 1, (except for SATA, which requires another selection at the menu to select the HDD to work on) use the command and press the F4 key to start the scan. If you see any "UNC"s or real slow blocks, you have bad sectors, which some types of bad sectors can be corrected.