Registry Errors, Disk Read Errors, BSODs... What's Wrong?!

[sirkelly55]

Hey Guys, I've posted this in two (probably applicable) places on this forum.

Over the past couple of months my desktop (a custom built gaming rig - 8350FX, HD7870, M5A97, WD 500GB, 8GB etc) has been having problems... It started with me getting "Windows explorer has stopped working" crashes, and those increased until I gave up and reinstalled Windows 7. This seems to have (mostly) gotten rid of those errors. I have also been randomly getting "Disk read errors: ctrl-alt-delete to restart" when trying to boot sometimes... I'm not sure if this is related though.
The major problem just happened today, when I started my computer and saw a Windows applying registry updates message (or something), then when I logged in I got a BSOD telling me there is a "REGISTRY ERROR. STOP: 0x00000051"...
Doing some research on google that is apparently a problem with hardware or something, but I am unsure what hardware... CPU, HDD, mobo??

I am absolutely stuck on how to fix this... Any help would be really appreciated.
Thanks, -K

 

[Joe C]

A disk read error usually points to a failing hard drive. A very weak power supply can cause the hard drive to run improperly too

 

[steves85]

You could try holding F8 when you boot and choose last known good configuration option