Need advise before I scratch my eyes out....

[ahsumdude]

My son's PC has been locking up lately. He's running an XP 1900, windows XP pro, 512 meg, ASUS 133, a couple WD HD's.

I've noticed that his PC would often would show errors with his HD. Xp would indicate some error related to FAT 32 upon boot up. I've reminded him to shut XP off the correct way. So the first thing I did was upgrade to the latest BIOS off ASUS's page version 1009. That went off without much ado. the next thing I did was convert his primary drive into NTFS file system. That apparently went off without a problew also. I rebooted went into windows and tried to bring up the help screen. Windows indicated it could not find some exe file. "Not good" I said to myself. I said "screw it" and decided to reinstall XP. I reformatted and proceeded to reintall. Xp aborted with a Blue screeen message. Tried again and again. same issue. tried doing a WIN 98SE install but it also aborts with a spool32 error message of some sorts. Tried that again and again.... Same abort message every time. Change drives with same problems. Reseated ram, same problem.

What gives? Should I go back to a different BIOS version? Take everything out and reinstall every componet? Anyone have a suggestion short of "get a new MB"?


thanks

 

[WhoDeeny]

If you can get far enough into the installation process, use it to completely remove any existing partition(s) and creation newone. If not try using fdisk to do the same and allow XP to create the partion in the installation process. I've done this to myself on occaision and found this is the best fix.

 

[foofoo]

hi,
do you have any ram that you could swap out? in my experience, blue screens on installations are almost always bad memory and ram does go bad every once in a while. good luck

 

[bjc112]

I would do a LLF (Low Level Format ) that cleans it up nice for you...

Also the ram idea might not be too bad, just try it with one of the 256 sticks assuming you have 2x256...

Good Luck, Let us know...

Bryan

 

[Mingon]

Also check the ide cable.

 

[TheWart]

i think foofoo is right on target with the RAM.

first, use WD utility to wipe the disk in a LLF (on their website). then, if the errors during installation continue use a memory testing program like Memtest86 or Goldmem to determine if it is your RAM. i would bet that that is what it is.

 

[PuppettMaster001]

that will also happen to some motherboards if all three dimms are filled. you will get random BSoDs.

 

[zephyrprime]

Low level formatting is not possible with hard drives anymore! Hasn't been for a long long long time!

Use Goldmemory to test your memory. Also use prime95 or some other program to test you CPU.