big problem with my computer

[m1ke101]

okay i've just had a very strange and frustrating problem with my computer, i left it on today and when i came back, it had a bsod, saying something about recommending to disable some options in bios so that it would work. i have win xp installed, and i rarely get bsod's, so i was a little worried, but i thought a reboot would fix it. Instead, i restarted my computer, and it asked which way i would like to start my computer, and i picked "normally" and it showed the xp loading screen for a second and bam, another bsod. now i was rather worried. i tried using the xp cd, and i formatted my hard drive, and installing xp fresh. It finished formatting and was copying the files for installation when it got to around 25% when it said that it coudln't read a file from the cd. i was again confused, because i had used the same cd a week ago to install xp, and it installed fine. I thought maybe the problem was the hard drive, so i took the hard drive from my little brothers computer and installed it in mine, and i still got a bsod. i really don't know what the problem is, and i can't seem to figure it out. i'm thinking it might be my motherboard, but would my motherboard cause errors like that? everything was working fine before today and now i can't even seem to install an os. i even tried installing win 98, and i finished formatting, and right when the installation began, it said that it couldn't initilize something and that setup wouldn't work because lack of a file. also, when i was trying to install xp, it would sometimes say that they couldn't initilize setup.dds, or something like that. i really don't understand whats wrong with my computer, especially since it seems to be having problems reading files. Anyone know what might be the problem?

 

[DaiShan]

Sounds like a stick of bad RAM to me, do a search and download on google.com for memtest86, follow the instructions and run it on loop for a couple of hours. If you find a bad stick, replace it.

 

[m1ke101]

hm bad ram eh? well its two sticks of crucial and they've been rock solid for about a year, so i haven't heard of ram just giong bad all of a sudden, but at this point, i'm up for any suggestions. i would love to run memtest, except for the fact that i can't even get into windows. i don't really know what to do, but i'll try the ram switch.

 

[DaiShan]

Memtest86 DOES NOT run in windows, it runs from its own mini OS shell, you simply boot up with a floppy to memtest and it will run from there. They designed it knowing that if your RAM was bad you couldn't get into your OS All things are prone to failure with time, and if it is crucial, you are in luck, they come with a lifetime warranty. Good luck to ya.

 

[m1ke101]

well i'll be a monkey's uncle, i removed a stick of ram, and voila, its installing xp right now! wow, would have never thought of that. thanks so much! i would have rmaed my hard drive and motherboard, thx for saving me a lot of time.