Hi all, I have a problem. My system reached it's "Half life" (win XP SP2) and so decided it is time for a fresh install. I boot to the WinXP CD and if I get to the 3 options (Enter to install, R to repair, F3 to exit) I am lucky.
What this means is that my HD is freshly formatted, but I cannot load any OS.
Tried Win XP Pro SP2, Win 2K Pro, only a Win 98 Dos boot disk works.
Usually, I get a BSOD stop error (Page fault in non-page error is the most common, but have also gotten win32k.sys, and IRQ les than ...) and occasionally, it just reboots itself automatically.
Thinking this to be hardware (since the only software running is XP SP2, which I was running previously), I did some basic stuff:
- No hardware in system except 1 HD (Maxtor 60GB ATA133 7200 RPM), 1 CDRW (Lite-On 4025 I think), MSI GF4 Ti4400 Vid card and 1 stick of Samsung CL2.5 DDR266 512MB.
- I have run memtest and Microsoft's WinDiag on the RAM and it is fine. I am guesing the memory slot is fine too then?
- Cleaned out my system, checked all connections and cleaned out my PSU - Antec TruPower 430W
- Swapped vid card with another AGP (ATI xpert 2000 - an oldie) which is working fine with the pc I am currently typing on...
It looks like the most likely culprits are PSU (3 yrs old, but sounds fine and seems ok) or Mobo (MSI KT3 Ultra ARU) or cpu (AMD XP1800+). Hard drive has no bad sectors, and RAM has been thoroughly tested with those two apps I mentioned.
Bios monitoring seems to indicate voltages at a proper level, and temperatures are definitely at a low level for CPU / mainboard area.
Does anyone know of any good diagnostics that can be run from a bootable CD or floppy for me to test the CPU and mobo? All that I seem to find requires you to have booted to Windows first.
Any other thoughts would help too. Obviously there is no dump/event viewer for me to refer to so am at a loss.
Thanks a bunch.
Kai
What this means is that my HD is freshly formatted, but I cannot load any OS.
Tried Win XP Pro SP2, Win 2K Pro, only a Win 98 Dos boot disk works.
Usually, I get a BSOD stop error (Page fault in non-page error is the most common, but have also gotten win32k.sys, and IRQ les than ...) and occasionally, it just reboots itself automatically.
Thinking this to be hardware (since the only software running is XP SP2, which I was running previously), I did some basic stuff:
- No hardware in system except 1 HD (Maxtor 60GB ATA133 7200 RPM), 1 CDRW (Lite-On 4025 I think), MSI GF4 Ti4400 Vid card and 1 stick of Samsung CL2.5 DDR266 512MB.
- I have run memtest and Microsoft's WinDiag on the RAM and it is fine. I am guesing the memory slot is fine too then?
- Cleaned out my system, checked all connections and cleaned out my PSU - Antec TruPower 430W
- Swapped vid card with another AGP (ATI xpert 2000 - an oldie) which is working fine with the pc I am currently typing on...
It looks like the most likely culprits are PSU (3 yrs old, but sounds fine and seems ok) or Mobo (MSI KT3 Ultra ARU) or cpu (AMD XP1800+). Hard drive has no bad sectors, and RAM has been thoroughly tested with those two apps I mentioned.
Bios monitoring seems to indicate voltages at a proper level, and temperatures are definitely at a low level for CPU / mainboard area.
Does anyone know of any good diagnostics that can be run from a bootable CD or floppy for me to test the CPU and mobo? All that I seem to find requires you to have booted to Windows first.
Any other thoughts would help too. Obviously there is no dump/event viewer for me to refer to so am at a loss.
Thanks a bunch.
Kai
