Windows file corruption avoidable?

Hey all, I have a small story to tell, then two followup questions that I'd love to have answered asap =)

Last night, I set about checking out two sticks of RAM for a friend - he got them from a person he didn't entirely trust, and wanted me to see if the sticks performed as they had been described.

I plugged the two sticks into my motherboard, alongside my other two (these and all other hardware specs are listed in my siggy). Turned the computer on, and just got a black screen.

I made a frowny face, turned the computer off, removed the RAM to see if any permanent damage had been done, turned the machine on, and was greeted by windows file corruption messages before booting could complete.

Since then, i've been able to get into safe mode, ensure everything is backed up onto my data drives, and am now prepared as I write this to go through my umpteenth windows xp home reinstallation. This is old hat for me, and I don't really have any concerns or worries over that... but am now wondering in retrospect....

Is there any way to protect those windows system files in a manner that screwy RAM or something of that nature won't be able to touch them?

In this case, I have had windows and any other software installed on one drive, with all data kept on other drives... Would creating a separate partition for windows xp home only have somehow protected the windows system files from corruption?

I guess I'd like to learn if this is something I can avoid in the future since I'm at a good point now to make such preparations, as I'm reinstalling anyway.

Thanks as always in advance for your insightful replies =)!

~chixo

"Is there any way to protect those windows system files in a manner that screwy RAM or something of that nature won't be able to touch them?"

None that I have come across in my experience.

"Would creating a separate partition for windows xp home only have somehow protected the windows system files from corruption?"

Most likely, no.

Your only real recourse to have a current image taken of the Windows partition, or drive just prior to any experimentation with hardware ala Acronis or Ghost.

thanks for the reply =)

well then it would seem things are as i feared - there's nothing to be done to end the cycle =) I'll try out a scheduled partition imaging process as you described this time around though - thanks for the suggestion Weary!

Any further thoughts/discussion are of course heavily appreciated.