XP Professional Crash and Burn?

[ldevito3]

i have been to other sites with no luck in helping me to solve my computer issue, so i am hoping you can help me out here. I have a dell Inspirion laptop 600M. I was having the blue screen of death errors so I wiped out my computer and reinstalled Windows XP. Needless to say that was a major pain and it took forever. Despite that I am having some problems with the computer (internet taking 10-30 minutes to load and things not going right after about the third time I turned it on to use it this began prior to that the first three times were fine) windows so I have been trying to reinstall XP Professional from the CD I bought from Microsoft (it is a genuine product). During the process i get two error messages, one about Outlook and another about a dll file, sorry cannot remember the exact one, saying they are corrupt and then It goes through the rest of the process and seems to complete, but when it askes me if i want to register I say, "no thanks, not at this time", as my internet is not connected wirelessly until I reset it up, and then it goes to the grass and clouds default XP desktop, but nothing else loads onto it. No toolbars, no folders, nothing and then it does nothing. I have to shut it off by holding down the power key. If the file is corrupt, the .dll file, what can I do as it is coming directly off the CD from Windows?

I have been trying for so long to fix it myself, that I am about ready to pitch the thing and get a new one, if only i had the cash!

Anyway if you can help me do a step by step fix I would be eternally greatful. If there is something else i need to do or try please tell me. I am willing to try anything. I do only have 512 RAM, but that should be enough right?

I did try to run the diagnostics test and I get this error: Start DST SHort Test
Test Results : Fail
Error COde : 1000-0146
Msg : Unit 0: DST Log contains previous error(s).

Is my hard drive really failing and i have to buy a new one? Like i said i did get it fixed once only to have it happen again after about 3-4 times I used it.

 

[Route44]

Yes, it sounds like it is your harddrive if you are getting that fail notice. Instead of buying a whole new laptop buy a new harddrive. Thay aren't expensive nor are they hard to replace.

Some examples here: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Drives

You need to know if your laptop takes SATA or ATA-6 (IDE) drives. If your laptop is newer it probably is SATA.

 

[gbhall]

Errors like you report often indicate a fault reading the CD, or rather the drive not so much the CD. Your PC could have been built as long ago as 2003, and more or less any part of it could be malfunctioning. That error is a HDD error, however. On a friends PC you can download a more sophisticated drive tester and write it to a bootable CD for full confirmation. If you need to replace the drive, and want to save your data, come back and I will describe how to mount your old drive in a normal PC to recover the data.