How to blow things up - real good.

1) Customer said "installed wrong disk" should be windows xp, boots up as windows 2000.

2) Even with windows 2000, multiple cases of BSOD (blue screen of death)

3) Installed windows xp.

4) BSOD continues.
At times, while performing Norton scan.
At times, while just putting a CD in the reader!

5) Called esupport (as the BSOD implied BIOS - memory problem)
Note: Tufftest did NOT show a RAM problem

6) System becomes totally unstable

7) Experts claim " Just reload windows xp"

8) Systems becomes totally inoperative.

9) Tried reloading Windows XP
Error messages say "files loaded from cd are corrupt" (nice trick!)

10) Tried reloading Windows 2000 (sure why not)
Error messages - see #9 above

11) Tried Windows XP boot disks (6 of them...)

12) Still no go.

Is there any hope?

Is the next step "fdisk" ?
Would hate to lose the data on drive C (backed up on partition E)

Comments?
j1076366 @ yahoo DOT com

Do a clean minimal OS installation on a different partition.
Copy the OS disc contents on hard disk.
Do a system repair from the files on hard disk, NOT from those on the disc.

(in reply to bubitutor)

unsure how to do a "min" os install. tried a boot with the 6 xp boot disks. guess what? it asks for the cd. which of course, has "errors" (unreal). if i could do the min install, then i guess it might recognize the cd and then copy the files to the c drive. what are the instructions to do a sys repair from the hard disk?

(in reply to sp)

Since your drive does not work even during system start-up, then the problem is related to one of these sources:

1. Cabling.
2. BIOS
3. Drive itself.

In case #1, please try a new UDMA/66 cable on (preferably) a different IDE controller than that used for hosting your hard disk(s).

In case #2, please disable UDMA modes on all hosts. After resolving the problem, you can start turn it on one by one.

In case #3, attach a different, known to work well drive for doing the initial set-up and copying of the OS files onto the hard disk.

Good luck!

(in reply to bubitutor)

Very imaginative.

The drive does not work?

How is this a hardware issue?

Thank you. I think it best I seek other assistance at this time.

(in reply to sp)

I think the answers you were give were 100 percent correct, trying to get you to the point of repairing the system.

You never mention if this was a newly assembled system, or what?

quote:

Very imaginative.

The drive does not work?

How is this a hardware issue?

Thank you. I think it best I seek other assistance at this time.

Well if the drive doesn't work, it would be a hardware issue. How do you think that is imaginative?

The suggestions were supplied to try and assist you.

(in reply to bubitutor)