BSOD after splash screen when starting Windows XP SP2

My issue is very strange. 2 days ago my laptop (Info: Compag Presario C551TU, Intel Celeron M 1.86GHz, 1GB RAM (DDR2-333), 80GB HDD Hitachi, Windows XP SP2--> an old laptop):
- Worked well
- Could be shutdowned, Hibernated and Started normally
- I haven't installed any softwares from the beginning of this month
- No Internet connection, no downloads ---> no viruses.

However yesterday I started it up and just 1 second after the splash screen of MS Windows XP SP2, the laptop displayed a blue screen of death and restarted. It keeped displaying BSOD and restarting until I turned its power off.

Today I use Hiren's Boot CD to test it. The results:
- HDD: no bad sector. I can use MiniXP to access my HDD and copy important files to a USB flash drive. So I don't think the hard drive is damaged.
- RAM: I use memtest86 and 100% passed, no error. I take the RAM piece out of the machine and clean it, too.
- I use Norton Ghost to recover my C:\ drive but it doesn't work although I have used this ghost file many times to recover my computer damaged by viruses.

I use MS Windows XP CD to do a fresh installation, but when I try to install, this error appears:
Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer

I've read some articles but I don't think they'll solve my problem because my laptop has the BSOD error by itself and I don't change any settings. The night before this problem I still could use it normally. I've never installed any other operating systems like Vista or 7.

Could you please show me how to solve this strange problem?
 
In C:\Windows\minidump you should find the crash dumps, if you can get to them and copy them to a working PC attach a few of them to your next post. They should show what is going on.

The symptons do indicate that your hard drive has failed even though you can read files from it, especially from this error message during setup: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. It is not uncommon for a hard drive to fail especially on an old machine.

Run the manufacturers diagnostic as follows.

Identify the make of your hard drive and then use one of the links below to get the manufacturers diagnostic for ISO CD. Burn the image file to a CD, boot the PC with the disc in the drive and run the diagnostics. You first need to set the CD drive to 1st in the boot order in the Bios setup.

If you do not have an image burner use this free software to make the CD.

http://www.isoimageburner.com/


ExcelStor: http://www.excelstor.com/eng/support.php?sub_id=3

Hitachi/IBM: http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/

Samsung: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/downloads/support_in_es.html

Toshiba Fujitsu: http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=SoftwareUtilities#diagnostic

Seagate, Maxtor & Quantum:http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads

Western Digital:http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en
 
Back