imstilllearning
Posts: 21 +0
Well, it's been a while since I needed to ask for help (thanks to this site)
But I am at my wits end with this thing.
The PC is my brothers,(Windows XP, AMD 1.8 ghz, 512mb ram and 80gb HDD)
It has always given me issues since bringing it back from the dead (free gift to us because of said death) such issues as, the onboard sound wouldn't work, installed drivers and it worked,I restart the PC and on occaision the drivers vanish and no sound again (seems random).
Purchased a PCI soundblaster and installed drivers, same story again randomly during startups the drivers vanish and the sound only works sometimes I assume because of plug and play drivers.
He bought a copy of battlefield 2 and when I tried to install the game, the patching (final update) fails every time (this patch is included on the disk), so I downloaded the same game patch from the EA games website and the same thing happens, patching failed.
I took the game to my PC and it has installed no problem no questions asked and all patching was 100% successful so it was his PC that had the problem with patching.
A month later I tried to install my copy of BF2142 on his buggy PC and it worked, and it patched even, and was playable.
Had to reformat due to a virus and when I reinstalled BF2142 I notice the EA site has a full patch package of all the previous patches slipstreamed into one .exe.
With this new game patch exe (from thier site) the patching now fails on BF2142. (haven't tried installing other games besides STEAM operated games that do seem to work)
Now recently I went to his PC to install the "CPL mouse fix" a program that removes the registry entries for windows mouse acceleration, it asked to restart the PC and I did, upon restart I was greeted with the message that windows won't start blah blah please insert CD and press "r" for repair at setup.
Problem was he lost my XP cd I used for his PC (a real copy) and cannot find it anywhere.
I downloaded a windows XP iso (I want to be 100% truthful with you) and burnt it to a disk, the copy of windows works but will not go to the setup screen, it stops every time to give the error message "STOP *** (0x000000ED 0x8237b03blah blah blah) the error message was telling me that the OS system is working properly (obviously not) and will not go to setup, it automatically shuts down the proccess.
So I burnt a cd specificly for accessing the recovery console and that worked, I went through the usual chkdsk /p and /r, tried fixboot, and tried many times to do a system restore with the RP## folders, that almost worked I no longer get the error message and the windows XP load screen pops up, then goes to a black screen and nothing is working.
At this point I wanted to give up and reformat the drive using my windows iso and our original CDkey, I open the recovery console, and did the command format c: /q /FS:NTFS, that was followed by AUTOFMT.EXE cannot be located or executed or something like that, please enter the path of the filename.... so I enter c: , and it says all data will be lost want to continue y/n and I say yes of course, then it says drive cannot be formatted >.> GAH!!!!
This is where I'm stuck friends, is there a way to force it to format my HDD? (only one HD in PC) like have you seen this before?
I have suspected this HDD to be faulty for months now what do you think? I don't want to send him out for parts he doesn't need cause money is tight this time of year.
Please help me xD XD xD
But I am at my wits end with this thing.
The PC is my brothers,(Windows XP, AMD 1.8 ghz, 512mb ram and 80gb HDD)
It has always given me issues since bringing it back from the dead (free gift to us because of said death) such issues as, the onboard sound wouldn't work, installed drivers and it worked,I restart the PC and on occaision the drivers vanish and no sound again (seems random).
Purchased a PCI soundblaster and installed drivers, same story again randomly during startups the drivers vanish and the sound only works sometimes I assume because of plug and play drivers.
He bought a copy of battlefield 2 and when I tried to install the game, the patching (final update) fails every time (this patch is included on the disk), so I downloaded the same game patch from the EA games website and the same thing happens, patching failed.
I took the game to my PC and it has installed no problem no questions asked and all patching was 100% successful so it was his PC that had the problem with patching.
A month later I tried to install my copy of BF2142 on his buggy PC and it worked, and it patched even, and was playable.
Had to reformat due to a virus and when I reinstalled BF2142 I notice the EA site has a full patch package of all the previous patches slipstreamed into one .exe.
With this new game patch exe (from thier site) the patching now fails on BF2142. (haven't tried installing other games besides STEAM operated games that do seem to work)
Now recently I went to his PC to install the "CPL mouse fix" a program that removes the registry entries for windows mouse acceleration, it asked to restart the PC and I did, upon restart I was greeted with the message that windows won't start blah blah please insert CD and press "r" for repair at setup.
Problem was he lost my XP cd I used for his PC (a real copy) and cannot find it anywhere.
I downloaded a windows XP iso (I want to be 100% truthful with you) and burnt it to a disk, the copy of windows works but will not go to the setup screen, it stops every time to give the error message "STOP *** (0x000000ED 0x8237b03blah blah blah) the error message was telling me that the OS system is working properly (obviously not) and will not go to setup, it automatically shuts down the proccess.
So I burnt a cd specificly for accessing the recovery console and that worked, I went through the usual chkdsk /p and /r, tried fixboot, and tried many times to do a system restore with the RP## folders, that almost worked I no longer get the error message and the windows XP load screen pops up, then goes to a black screen and nothing is working.
At this point I wanted to give up and reformat the drive using my windows iso and our original CDkey, I open the recovery console, and did the command format c: /q /FS:NTFS, that was followed by AUTOFMT.EXE cannot be located or executed or something like that, please enter the path of the filename.... so I enter c: , and it says all data will be lost want to continue y/n and I say yes of course, then it says drive cannot be formatted >.> GAH!!!!
This is where I'm stuck friends, is there a way to force it to format my HDD? (only one HD in PC) like have you seen this before?
I have suspected this HDD to be faulty for months now what do you think? I don't want to send him out for parts he doesn't need cause money is tight this time of year.
Please help me xD XD xD
