Windows Xp Install Trouble

[F1r35t0rm]

Alright, heres my problem, a bit strange, can't figure it out at all,
which is why im here

The past few weeks i would occasionally have my computer restart itself
and upon windows rebooting, it would come up with the error report ...
after sending the error report it brought me to the windows crash
analysis window which told me that it could not read my hard drive for
a moment which caused the restart, it would occasionally happen once or
twice a week, but i became used to it

A while after that i purchased a new hard drive which i used for backup
purposes and also for extra storage. shortly after it was installed,
the original errors became more frequent, to a few times a day at
maximum, ... after about 3 days of this is when my big issue occurs

during usage one night the computer turned itself off and refused to
load windows ... it would bring me to the screen asking me to use
regular boot, last known good, safe mode, etc. each attempt ended up in
my computer restarting, so I tried to install a fresh copy of windows
over the old copy which seemed to work out alright, but froze up on the
'finishing the install' with about 14 min left ... then I tried to
restart the computer and do the same thing again ... unfortunately it
froze this time, but with 20-something minutes left.

Every install after this resulted in my computer restarting immediately
after the first GUI screen in the install process would appear (the one
asking for the date/time) after about 3 restarts with this, i decided
to reformat that particular partition and try it again, alas it
resulted in the same problem with the restart at the GUI screen

Just when i thought all hope was lost, i decided to try without the new
hard drive in, ran the install on the reformatted partition on the
original drive with the new drive unhooked, and it left me with the
same problem, so i then thought maybe my drive is pooched, so i hooked
up the new drive in another computer in the house, installed partition
magic and created a 10 gig partition on it so i could try to install
windows on that, after putting that drive back in my computer, setting
it to the master drive and removing the old drive, i tried the same
install procedure, on the new 10 gig partition on my new drive, but
strangely enough it left me with the very same error of restarting
during the install ........ even worse is i dont get any error mesage
stating why it restarted, or any other indication

**note: i used 3 separate copies of windows XP professional to attempt
the reinstall and all came up with the same results

**** system specs
pentium 4 3.04 GHz processor ... 768 MB ram ... 128 MB agp video card
.... old drive = western digital 160 gig ... new drive = maxtor 200 gig
....


any help would be very greatly appreciated, and a thousand thanks in
advance
Andrew

 

[Guest]

Try power unplugged,remove battery,move the CMOS pin on the board from
1-2 position to 2-3 for .30 seconds or so,then replace to 1-2
position,replace
battery,power up.You'll need to reset time,date,etc in BIOS.Have the new
drive
set as master,unplug other hds except cdrom,install xp cd,boot to xp cd,at xp
cd menu screen select r for recovery,select 1 for disk C:,press enter for
password,
or simply typeiskPart In DiskPart delete all partitions,create one,press
ESC key,
type:EXIT Reboot to xp cd,select,install xp,new copy,format in ntfs.

 

[Malke]

Andrew E. wrote:

More garbage advice from Andrew E. He won't stop, so just ignore him.
Don't follow his advice. See my comments after the quoting:
You definitely are having hardware problems, but you know it isn't the
hard drive. Continually reinstalling XP - a software solution - without
fixing the hardware problems is futile so you need to find out what
hardware component (or components) is failing and replace it.

Here are general hardware troubleshooting steps. I would start by
testing the RAM:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts
with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are
uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a professional
computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigStoreUSA).

Malke

 

[F1r35t0rm]

Appreciate The Help Malke, thanks, will get started on the RAM testing
and see what happens