• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

What Piece Of Hardware Can Keep Programs From Installing?

olds

olds

Elite Member
My daughter's computer stopped installing all programs. They start but never finish, they just hang up. I couldn't update her virus program or install any other programs including a Trojan scanner. I assumed she got a virus and formatted the hdd. I reinstalled XP on it and it is still the same. Can't update Windows or install Norton's. It must be hardware related. I am at a loss.
AMD 1.33
Epox 8K7A
256 PC2100
ATI 7000
Maxtor 60.0 GB
 
My first guesses would be, RAM, hard drive or hard drive cable. Bad RAM can cause all kinds of unpleasentness in general, so hit up the RAM with memtest. A bad hard drive (less likely than the other two I think) could also be preventing things from being written to the drive and causeing problems. Check the drive out (like I said, not too likely but certainly worth checking). And hard drive cables. Check all of them, for hard drives and optical drives. It could be as simple as a loose cable to as simple as a bad one. I'd first check to ensure they are secure, if the problem persists, try new ones. The RAM is the first place I'd check.

\Dan
 
My guess would be that the problem is still software. Possibly, it could be caused by bad sectors on the HD or something. Anyway, IIWY, I'd pop the drive out, stick it into a working machine as a slave and virus scan that sucker. Then scandisk/chkdsk it. Heck, run fixboot on it from the recovery console. And update the BIOS on the offending machine just to be sure. That should cover most everything. If you still can't install stuff, then it's probably some sort of hardware problem.

Oh, and you might want to use a different XP CD to install. Maybe it's just some corrupted OS file that slipped in somehow...?

My 2c, anyway. GL.
 
Thank for the input, all good suggestions. While reading them it reminded me that I had a hard time installing XP. I tried to boot from a 98SE start disk to format but it kept giving me an invalid boot disk error.
Then after I formatted from the XP CD and installed XP, there was no OS when I rebooted. It was gone. The third attempt, with a different CD worked but the download problem still exists.
I have more RAM and a hdd to try. I'll also recheck and replace the cables. Thanks again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top