Windows continously corrupting itself?

[Deleted]

My friend recently had a major hickup with a corruption of a few key Windows files.
I did a low-level format to ensure stability for a while, but already 2 days later (today) some Windows files got corrupted again!
I havn't helped him yet, but last time none of Microsoft's Startup repair utilities worked. Not sure about this time..

Any idea of what this strange phenomenon is?
Any sensible advice is appreciated

[Deleted]

Some possibilities in order of likelihood:

- Failing hard drive (what type is it? Conventional or SSD?). Sectors going bad, causing files to become corrupt
- Host controller or driver problem
- Virus of some sort
- Other hardware (e.g. motherboard) failure or problem (less likely)

[Amorac]

A low level format? What kind of drive does he use ?

My guess would be a drive going bad, doing a full checkdisk might help somewhat.

Try different cables and ports as well. If possible try another drive.

[Shiveron]

Have you memtest yet? Bad ram can kill an OS in an instant as soon as the bad sections are addressed.

[mafao]

Bad RAM would almost certainly lead to crashes and freezes. I also think that its a defective hard drive.