Need advice Re: WinXP problems

[Mac]

Have built a new computer with no apparent hardware
issues, and the system has operated ok with a prior OS.
However, newly installed WinXP Home Ed has had
several 'crashes' and STOP errors of different types.
My 'second' hard drive contains backups of many files,
programs, images, etc. Can a file on a non-OS drive cause
such errors I'm wondering? The only obvious symptom of
problems after restarting is that no user names now
appear on the welcome screen (I C-A-D twice and enter
name/password) and when clicking on User Accts in Cont
Panel a small window says "The current User Acct is not
recognized, Restart and then open User Accts," indicating
file corruption. Event Viewer has not pointed
specifically at a problem source as yet but I'm guessing
a software 'driver' or conflict of some sort is the
culprit. I have Norton 2002 Internet Security with AV.
Thanks for any help.
Mac

 

[Guest]

usally a bios update is needed if you upgraded to win xp
from an older version vgl2u

 

[Mac]

Thanks. Yeau, I have Intel's latest (July 14, 2003) for
my mb. Mac

 

[NRGeti]

Just some ideas:
1. Visit http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm and look around to see if
there are any suggestions. This is a very complete site.
2. I had to remove Norton's from one of my PCs. It caused all kinds of
strange problems. There was some kind of conflict with other software.
Working with the techs never solved the problem.
3. Have you got all of the BIOS settings correct?
4. I doubt that the second drive has anything to do with the problems.
5. Did you upgrade from Win 98 or something like that? Quite often this
fails. Need to reinstall Windows XP from scratch.

 

[Mac]

Thanks, NRGeti, I'll follow up at Kelly's and another
site I've heard about. Yeau, I'm a little suspicious of
the Norton programs but have no 'smoking gun' so to
speak. I've re-checked BIOS settings, everything seems
ok. The STOP errors said to disable caching or shadowing
but these are simply stop-gap measures, I believe, I need
to check this further. I paid an extra $100 to get the
full version of XP Home Edition so as to have a really
sound installation from a freshly formatted drive. I'm
about ready to look for a version of Win98SE. On the
other hand, there surely must be a fairly simple
resolution of this problem as I've heard acclaims for
WinXP from several sources.

My User Name/Account symptom/issue that developed after
one of the STOP errors may be pertinent --? I've
reformatted and reinstalled WinXP twice now and don't
want to repeat this until the cause(s?) of these errors
is/are fairly well established. I'm not familiar with
the many details of XP and thought Microsoft-XP
specialists hung out at this forum to help with problems
like mine -- apparently not from your comments, huh.

Mac

 

[NRGeti]

I run Windows XP Pro and for several months now I have had a very stable
system. I have over a hundred programs installed which I use for
experimenting and testing. So far, knock on wood, things are moving along.