XP system wont boot

[Unrealed2]

I have had a refurbished pentium4 computer for about a year now. About a week ago it took a real long time to boot and to open applications. I reinstalled XP formatting and repartitioned the HD(since when I bought it the drive was divided) into one volume. The computer worked fine and I re-installed all my software, the next day it wont boot at all. I get an error message stating it cannot open windows so I try reinstalling XP again and it crashed while formatting, now it just says disk error.

Any suggestions short of throwing this system end over end to the curb would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[AbsolutDealage]

Boot the system using a bootable floppy disk. Reformat the drive using FDISK. Scan the drive for errors using chkdisk. Re-install windows using the XP CD.

 

[Unrealed2]

tried that and the system seems to recognized only about 10meg of the original 80. Does this sound as if the drive may be shot?

 

[Unrealed2]

recieved a new hard drive from new egg today and it is very loud and wont install XP. Can this be a bad drive too?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Unrealed2
recieved a new hard drive from new egg today and it is very loud and wont install XP. Can this be a bad drive too?

The odds make that improbable though certainly not impossible, I would suspect the IDE cable is faulty or that the IDE controller on the board may be damaged try a different cable and if the issue persists try doing the install using the 2nd controller and adjust the boot device order in the bios appropriately. Good luck and post back how you make out

 

[Unrealed2]

tried a different ribbon cable and a old drive I had (2Gb) and it worked. Emailed New Egg and got an RMA hope the one they send me works