computor fails to boot up

[ricky d]

I have a dell deminsion 8100 (about 4 yrs old )that came
from dell with win. ME., pent 4 , 30 gig hd, 256 ram.
It crashed so I took it to frys electronics store. they
wiprd out the hard drive and reinstalled ME and did not
save any other data. before I left the store I purchased
windows xp home upgrade and norton works and zone alarm
fire wall. took em home and installed em. all was great
for several days. went to power it up one day and the box
under the xp logo that usualy displays green dots in
acumalitive sucsession untill the box is full of green
dots and the desk top appears. Now a group of three dots
pass thru the box in rapid sucession several times for
about 10 seconds then a blue error screen pops up for 1/2
second with message i cant catch long enough to read. and
the cpu keeps trying to boot up repeating this process. I
went to setup screen F2 and error message reads key board
error. I tryed unplugging the keyboard from the cpu and
same thing happens. tryed another keyboard still same
thing. Is this a software problem or a problem in the cpu
keyboard port

 

[Rich Barry]

Ricky, Since you have the WinXP CD do a Repair Install.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[ricky d.]

Thanks Rich, I wasn't sure if it was a software
compatabilty issue (win ME installed by dell )to win xp
installed by a knowledgable friend or a failure inside the
cpu hardware. I just learn about the f8 key last night
when I posted the previous message. I went home this
morning and used all options from that screen to no avail
( except the c:\ comand ) I installed Norton System Works
when I installed win xp which I thought would allow you to
have a auto system restore that unlike win ME would keep
its self updated (sys restore date ) automaticly. what is
the c:\ on XP for sys restore ? I am still going to heed
your advance, it just concerns me that my cpu crashed
twice within one week for no known reason.