Help with a XP problem

[Guest]

Here the basics. I was having problems with my wireless linksys internet
adapter and I thought the problem was my USB ports. My system would freeze
and I'd have to do a hard reboot quite often. Otherwise things were fine.
Then linksys connection died altogether. Tried the adapter on another
computer it worked fine. Soooo .. I changed the power supply thinking this
was the problem and at the same time (I know I should only do one thing at a
time) added 512 ram to the system bringing it up to 1.5. Was able get system
up but adapter was still not recognized by windows and no internet
connection. Then I got the blue screens with the stop messages. Both
0x0000005E and 0x0000008E. Took the ram out, didn't help. Now the system is
really crazy having a hard time even booting to safe mode. Don't even have
windows cd to reload windows. Any and all suggestions welcome. System is a
generic clone with AMD processor about two years old. Thank you.

 

[Guest]

To make yourself a Windows CD, look for an i386 folder, and burn this
(including subfolders) - it won't be a botoable CD, but you can start the
setup by running winnt.exe or winn32.exe

As regards diagnosis, try to take things in logical steps. First I'd be
inclined to test the hardware with a CD-based OS such as Knoppix or Ubuntu.
If that will run for a few hours without glitches then the hardware is
probably OK.

Next, I would check the system for spyware. Use Lavaoft's Ad-Aware, or just
manually look for suspicious processes whose purpose or origin cannot be
identified. If you are using Internet Explorer then spyware is a strong
possibility.

Finally if you have problems with USB devices not being recognised, I find
that ESCD (CMOS extended-data area) corruption is a common cause. The cure
here is to reset the CMOS by using the internal mobo jumper (see your
system's manual) or taking the CMOS battery out for a while, or if neither is
possible, then by using the startup BIOS screen option.