XP will not allow me to load programs or start some.....

[jpk]

Here's my rig's components:
A64 3200+, Asrock Dual SATA2 with 2 gigs Corsair, ATI X1800XT 512 PCIe, Santa Cruze sound card, 550w Aspire PS, 160GB Maxtor ATA, dual DVD drives-Hitachi ROM and BenQ DVD R/W. Iomega 250mb Zip internal. Running XP SP2 with AntiVir PE and XP firewall.
That's most of it....here's the issue. When I try to load a game from CD I get a CAB error and the load will terminate. I disabled AntiVir to see if that might be the issue but still same problem. Any thoughts? TIA

 

[Markbnj]

Well, very often this will be a permissions issue. Are you on an account with administrator privs?

 

[jpk]

No, just my personal box without any admin prefs set. It happens with multi disc programs...which are usually games. Sometimes I can get through the first disc before the error notice appears and sometimes it comes up after all the discs are loaded. Because of that I don't think it's a privilage issue. Wondering if there's a corrupted XP file somewhere.

 

[Atheus]

The fact you can sometimes complete a load and sometimes not makes me think it isn't a simple settings or permissions thing. Is this computer new? Are you sure it's stable? Memtest86? Prime95?

 

[jpk]

I have not run any diagnostic programs on the rig. It is a home built and is a few years old but I have been doing periodic updates to it. Actually, right now it is pretty new. New mobo, cpu, added 1gb of ram.

 

[rcalzada51]

It could actually be a memory issue. I had a similar problem when I upgraded my MB, processor and memory. I upgraded to an Athlonx2 4200+ with 2GB. The system would keep crashing when I would load programs. It was randomly kicking me out of the installation at different times, Especially when loading Multi-CD games. I swapped out the memory and whala! That was it. Unfortunately, if it turns out to be your memory, it could have corrupted other program files and even your Windows installation in the process and you may have to start a fresh install of Windows.

 

[jpk]

The problem was present before I installed the extra 1gb of ram. I had also installed a fresh copy of XP about a month ago. Something is getting corrupted somewhere along the way. When I reinstalled XP I did a complete wipe of the HD with Drive Erase. Took it down to as if it were a new drive. It was also present with my old mobo an Abit NF7 v2.0. All the ram is running in dual channel and seems to register fine in post. The ram is all the same timing and mfgr. I think I'll try another wipe of the drive and start again. Could the HD have an issue? Doesn't seem like it because everything loads ok etc. but you never know. Is there scan disc or check disc to see if there are any corrupted files in XP?

 

[Markbnj]

No, just my personal box without any admin prefs set.

This statement is a little ambiguous. Does the account have admin priveleges? If not, then you would get behavior exactly as you describe. Some programs will make it through install, while others will not. The behavior can vary based on a bunch of factors, all related to what changes the install tries to make to Windows (i.e., write the registry, the program files folder, or the system folders, etc.)

If the account doesn't have admin rights, add it to the administrators group for the machine (you will need to log on as an admin using an account with privs to do this), and see if the problems go away.

 

[Atheus]

Am I right in thinking it sometimes completes loading, and sometimes not, with exactly the same CD? If so it's definately not a permissions issue...

New mobo, cpu, added 1gb of ram.

A computer is a processor and a memory, so that's a brand new computer. Every time you build a new computer you should run stability tests - try superPI first, as it doesn't take too long, and is a good indicator of general problems. You want to do the 32M calculation (32 million digits of PI) and the box should complete it without errors.