Going Mad... OS

[Armistead]

Have computer made by Intrex 4 years ago. For whatever reason it just kept rebooting. I tried every tip I could find online to no effect. When it rebooted, the Hard drive made a funny sound. Giving up, I did a total format and new install using the xp disc. This was the first time I used it and it was in perfect shape.
Everything did fine..loaded all drivers, updated and played on for three days fine.
Then it happened again...rebooting

So I formatted and started a fresh xp install again. About half way through copying files I started getting one invalid windows image after the other. I think the first one was "tourxp", I skipped the file just to see what it would do and one error after the other. Told to check disc was in, clean it, ect. Disc looked fine. Tried this several times and it would never work. My 12 year old son tried cleaning my XP disc in some cd cleaner with something and ruined it.

Thinking it must be the hard drive, I had a friend go and buy a new hard drive and new XP OS. Install drive and start loading....everything looks fine....then it happens again while copying files, same place "tourxp" invalid windows image....Makes no sense...same problem but on a new hardrive and new xp OS...old harddrive removed...

I go ahead and skip all the numerous files just to get to the end of the process to see what it would do. Get a blue screen..It went off fast, but I think I read "Bad pool caller or sector", then a bunch of other wording that I didn't have time to read, but the usual check with admis. , check cd, ect....

Makes no sense. I'm disabled and spent my last little money trying to get it fixed. Now I have a new worthless hard drive and OS that wasn't the problem anyway.
Any Idea's. Will be stuck in bed for weeks after surgery Thursday and playing my WWII sub game sure helps pass the time

 

[DjKraid]

you can try an men.test with a linux (ex ubuntu) live cd...

 

[Spyder_1386]

Hey Armistead

The fact that you received a BSOD without anything installed on your hard-drive tells me that you might have faulty RAM. Run MemTest on it to verify if there's a problem. If you have more than one RAM chip, test them separately. MemTest can be found here ... http://www.memtest86.com/

Spyder_1386

 

[Sharam]

If you post your system spec to the best of your knowledge, we might be able to help better, this does sound like a hardware issue but we don't know if the CD is original or burnt, whether your system overheats, is it dusty, is there enough power supplied to your components.

It could be as simple as your optical drive or the data cable, it could also be not enough juice form the +5.0V rail of your power supply or the max combined output corrupting data with reads and writes, could be your RAM. What if hardware monitor shows, your +3.3V, +5.0V and the +12.0V rails outside of the + %5?
I'm working on a system with +5.0V reading 4.55V, this is less than 4.75 min thatI would like to allow, since the drives read and write heads use the +5V rail, this system will have issues eventually depending on how much the other components draw!

First thing would be to do a visual check of the system, are the CPU heat sink and fan dirty? Are there any signs of bulging or leaking capacitors on the motherboard, have you added any optical drives or upgraded video card to the original config? Have you tried another CD ROM?

Most times when I get these type of errors on older drives and/ or burnt XP CD, changing the drive or making a new CD fixes the issue.

I'm not good with guessing, full system spec as well as a bit more history as to the when problems started always help us help you better.

 

[Armistead]

Cleaned everything. Installed the new HD, new OS, same problem. Finally pulled each ram chip out and rebooted. Finally booted up. Put the bad chip back in, problems back. So I hope that was it. Got a new ram chip, actually two more and loaded up....everything working fine. Thought it might be the slot, but new chip did fine....

Always keep it clean. Still, wondered why it didn't show up in mem test as bad. Did mem test, took long enough, but no problems. However when I pulled the bad one out and put it back in, the next test showed it as bad. So thank you all for the advice. That led me to try each ram chip and that was or seemed to be the problem. I can't say enough thanks. Saved me a lot of time and no shop could get to it for 5 days, then I would be flat on my back waiting....now I can listen to my WWII radio mods and play my sub game and poker why I lay in the bed for a few weeks.....finally getting these rods out of my back and pray I can get back to work soon.

You guys are great...........................

Fingers crossed......

 

[Route44]

As for Memtest, as good as test as it is, bad RAM has been known to pass on occassion. Hope you get well soon.