Random rebooting/Cant repair-reinstall windows xp

[EvoKyle]

My Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+
Asus M2V Motherboard
3 GB RAM (Crucial Ballistix 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM PC2-6400 800MHz Dual Channel)
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT XXX 256MB PCIe w/Dual DVI
Seagate 120GB Serial ATA 7200/8GB/SATA-3G
Sony DRU120C 16x DVDRW Burner
450W Power Supply

Running Windows XP SP2

Today, I had the computer on and was playing Xbox at the time...and I saw the computer screen go black...my computer had rebooted itself. It seemed to restart fine..but then as it was loading my desktop, it started asking me to register my copy of windows. The copy of windows I have is a legal copy, I bought it from tigerdirect So i went along with it and re-registered my copy..it goes through the steps then says that it was successfully registered..but then a few seconds later it gives me an error saying some file was missing and couldnt register my copy and would log me off the computer. i rebooted the computer and this time it didnt even ask for me to register my copy...but a few minutes after booting up it rebooted itself again. I decided screw it im gonna reinstall windows..so i went into bios, changed boot up priority to boot from cd..and tried reinstalling windows...

well now it gets to like 68% then it starts giving me errors saying the file blahblah was not copied correctly and asks if i want to retry, skip or quit..

at first i try retrying, but that just brings me back to the error..so i said to skip the file...so it continues the install for a short while, then comes back with another error about a file not being copied correctly...

now im stuck..i cant boot the computer anymore and i dont know what to do...im at the point where i am about to just go online and buy a new harddrive bc apparently this ones screwed...

any ideas? please help me figure this out lol

[shadowpr]

At this point, you could try to zero fill your hard drive.

I would also run diagnostics on the hard drive.

[EvoKyle]

edited..

going to try zero filling the harddrive

edit 2: my hard drive didnt come with any setup cd or anything..so how do i go about zero filling it?

[shadowpr]

Might want to try the diagnostics first. Could save you a step if it does fail.

[EvoKyle]

how exactly would i do that?

[shadowpr]

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...oads/seatools/

Download the one for dos. Burn it to cd, and boot with it in the drive, and let it run.

[EvoKyle]

ty, will give that a try

[EvoKyle]

ran a test...said the hard drive passed...so i went ahead and started a full erase

[shadowpr]

Ok. As long as it passed, then you know the hard drive is good and you don't need a new one.

[EvoKyle]

so once its completed erasing it...i should be able to reinstall windows cleanly right?

what would have caused this to happen in the first place?

[shadowpr]

After it finishes, reinstall it. Make sure it's recognized by bios, and the cd is set to boot first.

Make sure the xp cd is nice and clean, and put it in, and let it go. It should work. If not, then we can try and figure it out from there.

[amdalex]

You may have got a bad virus, or your PSU might be going.

[EvoKyle]

well i just finished trying to reinstall windows...and it started giving me the same errors at arond 80%

what do i do now?

[amdalex]

PSU, might be bad. Also does your bios recognize all your RAM?

[EvoKyle]

could it be bad RAM? i just put in two 1 GB sticks (brand new from newegg.com) to go along with my current 1 GB stick

its listed in my sig the brand/speed ect...

[EvoKyle]

just tried reinstalling windows a third time...still the same errors.

i also checked in my bios...its recognizing all of my RAM

im thinking about trying a different windows xp install cd...any other ideas?

[shadowpr]

If you haven't had any other problems with that cd drive, then I would try the following:

First, take out all memory except for one stick.

Try a different xp cd.

Try a different cd drive and cable.

If none of those work, then....I'll think about it.

[EvoKyle]

seemed to fix the problem by removing the two 1GB sticks of RAM that i put in last week..i was able to reinstall windows and get everything back up and running so far

[amdalex]

I don't think that new RAM was compatible.

[shadowpr]

Try running memtest on each stick of ram. That will tell you if the ram is bad.

Glad you got it running.

[EvoKyle]

i dont see why the ram wouldnt have been compatible...it was the same brand, same speed..ect

im only running 1 stick or ram right now, but i think my problem was running 3 sticks of ram rather than just 1, 2 or 4

[shadowpr]

Memtest will tell you if a stick was bad. It could also be a bad slot on the moher board.

[Cricket]

Are you still using that XION power supply? If you are, try replacing it with something better.

Random reboots is one symptom of a failing hard drive. It can also cause data corruption due to "dirty" power being fed to the system.

Cricket

[EvoKyle]

Originally Posted by Cricket Are you still using that XION power supply? If you are, try replacing it with something better. Random reboots is one symptom of a failing hard drive. It can also cause data corruption due to "dirty" power being fed to the system. Cricket

yea i am..im planning on picking up an antec 500w from work with my next paycheck

[phigdon]

i have had the same problem on my old machine. i will hazzard a guess and say that your HDD and PSU are fine and that windows has become corrupted or damaged. I fixed my system by wiping the HDD, reformatting it, and installing a fresh copy of windows. the only issue I had was getting the 10/100 usb driver installed for internet connection. after that let it update and reboot as needed. its been working flawlessly for over 2 years and I use it for my kids computer after i upgraded my system.

[EvoKyle]

well this morning i tried to run 2 sticks of ram in the first two slots on my mobo like the diagram in my mobo's manual showed, and when i tried to turn on the computer, it would start randomly rebooting again, if it booted at all.

as soon as i pulled those two sticks out and put the single stick in, problems disapeared

im guessing everyones going to tell me to run a mem test, but how do i do that?

[gods_son_is_me]

Haha. Geez, something is giving you a hard time.
We defiantely know it's the RAM by your tests. Bad RAM is a bad thing.
Yes, it is recogmended doing a mem test. Windows has an efficient one: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/M...agnostic.shtml
or
http://www.memtest.org/
Run that on all 3 sticks. Should tell you which ones are faulty. Then get a hold of NewEgg if its the new one.

[EvoKyle]

so i took out the two sticks that were causing the problem, logged into my account at newegg.com and reordered 1 GB of the RAM that IS working right now, and installed it.

BIOS recognizes the 2.0GB, and so does Control Panel...but the computer seems to be slightly slower when loading up different programs

maybe its just in my mind playing tricks on me, but is there any other way to make sure i have both sticks running correctly? I have them installed on the first two slots according to the diagram in the mobo's manual