System Instability due to bad O/S Install?

[Russ M.]

I've been having a lot of stability problems with a new system I built.
I've been working through each of the component areas trying to isolate the
cause. I've made a lot of progress to this point, but it's still not 100%.
It recently occurred to me that my installation of Windows 2K was done
before any of this began. Can it be likely that an installation of Windows
2K could have been corrupted to the point that the slight system instability
persists? This corrupted installation would have been caused by an
excessively overheated CPU.

From the start, there was a CPU cooling problem that caused data corruption,
spontaneous reboots, etc. I solved the cooling problem and it became more
stable, but not completely. I've tested the memory, power supply, and
drives to confirm they are not the problem. I updated the BIOS on the MB
and things again got much, much better. But in very rare instances,
spontaneous reboots and auto-launching of my scanner software persists. Not
very often, but it happens.

I arrived at this point of wondering because when I try to launch 'Windows
update' from the Start menu, it fails with an error code. But I just
installed the same copy of Windows 2K on another PC and the update worked
just fine. Same disk, same key, same network. I can't think of a single
reason why the Update would fail except for some sort of corruption on the
system.

Any thoughts, ideas, advice, or input? I'll appreciate anything offered.

Thanks!!

 

[philo]

I've been having a lot of stability problems with a new system I built.
I've been working through each of the component areas trying to isolate the
cause. I've made a lot of progress to this point, but it's still not 100%.
It recently occurred to me that my installation of Windows 2K was done
before any of this began. Can it be likely that an installation of Windows
2K could have been corrupted to the point that the slight system instability
persists? This corrupted installation would have been caused by an
excessively overheated CPU.

From the start, there was a CPU cooling problem that caused data corruption,
spontaneous reboots, etc. I solved the cooling problem and it became more
stable, but not completely. I've tested the memory, power supply, and
drives to confirm they are not the problem. I updated the BIOS on the MB
and things again got much, much better. But in very rare instances,
spontaneous reboots and auto-launching of my scanner software persists. Not
very often, but it happens.

I arrived at this point of wondering because when I try to launch 'Windows
update' from the Start menu, it fails with an error code. But I just
installed the same copy of Windows 2K on another PC and the update worked
just fine. Same disk, same key, same network. I can't think of a single
reason why the Update would fail except for some sort of corruption on the
system.

Any thoughts, ideas, advice, or input? I'll appreciate anything offered.

Thanks!!

i'd do a ram test or just plain substitute ,

if you think the OS had gotten corrupted during the installation
you can always boot off the CD and perform a repair installtion...

or more drastic...just format the drive and start over

 

[Dave]

It's definitely possible that you're install was corrupted. I had this
happen to me when I installed WinXP from a backup disc that was burned with
errors. Doing a repair install from the same disc would have left the same
problems. Get your temp problems under control, then reinstall from a disc
that is known to be good.

Dave

 

[DaveW]

If you built a machine that was having CPU overheating problems while you
were installing the OS then, Yes, you probably have Registry errors. You
should seriously consider reformatting the harddrive and doing a fresh
install of the OS.

 

[Paul Trimble ACITP]

I recently slipstreamed sp2 onto a cd and reinstalled windows xp from
scratch. My first install was crashing and turned out it was a corrupt
registry. So yes, a fresh install can go wrong, try checking your event
viewer for any error messages. In the end I reinstalled again and
everything is now working fine,

PT