Computer is driving me nuts

[maviczap]

Need some PC help. My main PC has been up the creek for a few weeks now, despite all my efforts to get it going again. It developed a fault and would get past the widows XP black screen with the blue time bar icon. It would freeze during this part of the loading process.

I have reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP a fresh. I have the original XP disc, as I built this PC up as a barebones system.

Even after reinstalling XP it would only get past the black XP screen only after the 5th or 6th reboot. Then without warning it would just freeze. Nothing would work. Rebooting the system would result in the same problem with windows not loading at all past the black widows screen

So doesn't seem like a software problem, more like a hardware fault somewhere.

I've taken out the graphics card and reverted to the onboard graphics on the motherboard. Still no joy.

Could it be a dodgy memory module (running 2 x 1gb) or a fubarred motherboard?

Any ideas

[tigersaw]

you could try taking one of the mem modules out, swapping etc

[the_lone_wolf]

Could be any manner of things, my money would be on RAM or HDD fault

You can try Spinrite to test the HDD or Memtest86 to test the RAM

memtest86+ bootable cd, download that, that will test the memory for you.

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

Could be any manner of things, my money would be on RAM or HDD fault

You can try Spinrite to test the HDD or Memtest86 to test the RAM

Sorry, swapped HDD's too. both the 250Gb & 80Gb did the same thing.

Sounds like the RAM

I'll download Memtest86 and give that a wirl.

Cheers for the advice

Use the + version, i cant remember why as it was a long time since ive used it, but i had to use that version for some reason lol

[maviczap]

Update
Ran Memtest86+ which reported no errors. So removed the RAM which I'd installed a while back after swapping and testing if either module caused a fault on boot up. When booting up with only the newer RAM, the PC wouldn't even boot up

But as I was swapping some bits over to another PC, I noticed that the HDD jumper was set differently on the problem PC. So swapped the jumper to the same as the other PC.

Hey ho, loaded XP onto the HDD and no freezing on installing XP or once XP had been installed

So quieter PC is now fixed. Don't know whether it was the jumper position or the RAM

But its working now.

Thanks for the advice guys