Again with my friends computer. When installing windows, it gets past the format, then about 10 mins into the installation (usualy shortly after the security code is entered) there is a BSOD (once there was a C:/windows/system... corrupt file error message and it froze). Now i've tried it with two oem XP cds, i've tried swopping the cable to the cd drive and i've tried changing the the drive entirely. At the moment the hard drive is in my computer and it passes diskcheck with zero bad sectors. I cant think what else to try. I need help spec: ASUS M2n32-sli delux wifi edition socket AM2 X2 4200+ 1gb corsair xms samsung 200gb hdd tagan 530w power supply
I was checking to see if it didn't have SP2. Do you have an IDE drive you can test it on? Other then that the only thing I can think of is its a RAM problem.
thats what i was just thinking, i could shift some data around and free up one. Is there anything i can try in the mean time?
Just tried the install with an old ide hdd that should be fine, same BSOD. i guess this means the motherboard or ram is at fault.
Can't be an ordinary RAM problem, because the mobo would check it out during POST. I would think that it may be a mobo/CPU or RAM heat problem (not necessarily overheating, just a bad contact expanding or a bad component failing) or PSU stability problem. Something causes your PC to conk out after about 10 minutes of vigourous (installation) activity. You could try running something CPU intensive on that PC from a USB key or another HDD. See if it conks out after roughly the same time.
i'm not sure. It gets through format fine, even if i do the full format and yet still crashes around the same point. usually around the network configuration part (but not in exactly the same point). It does this even if i run installation after installation so surely if it was a heat issue it would occur earlier the next time i run the installation. i'll try it anyway. I might try putting my psu in there and maybe try installing xp from a different machine first then running memtest or something. The problem is he is getting impatient and wants to rma something tommorow and im going away so don't have much time.
Might be worth checking the inbuilt nic settings in the bios - see if it's enabled/disabled, see if it works by switching the settings.
Installed windows using my machine then switched hard drives around. After a couple of attempts i managed to run memtest and it imediately came up with loads of errors saying certain word pairs didnt match in the main memory. I pressume this means the ram needs sending back. The thing is they sent the wrong ram in the first place, they sent a single 1gb module of top quality xms instead of 2 512mb modules of value select. My m8 also just told me that when he opened the ram, the packaging was already open and the whole thing was wrapped in bubble wrap. So that makes it fairly conclusive.
I had this same problem, and got errors running memtest. It turned out that I had my timings too tight (even though I wasn running at the fastest supported timings!?), which was causing the problem. Try slackening off the timings and see what happens. If you still get problems than the RAM is fooked I'm afraid.
