Major Problems XP Pro

[davsl]

My system is composed of.
ECS K7S5A Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
512MB DDR PC2100
Geforce 4 MX 440 64 MB DDR
30 GB Fireball HD.
Q-Tec 450 Watt PSU.

I am having major problems after I carried out a full format and installed Windows XP Pro, I have spent hours of time and I am basically ready for smashing the stupid article with a sledge hammer!

My problems began when I first installed the drivers for my graphic card (41.09 detonators) and the screen went blank a couple of times (black). The drivers appeared to install and I rebooted the system and it appeared to be ok. I did not really think that much of that as I recently help build a system with a friend that is more or less identical to mine and it displayed similar characteristics when installing the drivers for the Geforce 4 MX 440.

My problems appeared to have started when I partitioned the hard drive using partition magic. Before I did this I had installed Kazaa P2P software and maybe I should of rebooted (I will explain later). Basically I partitioned the hard disk in 2 equal halves (NTFS) and followed the on screen commands. I rebooted the system when asked to and when it restarted I was told that my software had been installed and I had to reboot. I think the software it was reffering to was some Bullguard or something that is spyware with Kazaa. However I am sure I did not request this. Anyway after rebooting the system would not boot up and kept on crashing after the first Win XP start screen and rebooting itself, if left the PC would do this infinite times. So I decided to format the drive and reinstall XP Pro on the C: partition. this time I used a different graphics card an old Rage Pro 4MB I had lying around. When I tryed to install XP it failed twice and this is one of the messages it posted: "The file ntmsdba.dll was not copied correctly. The file setup placed on your hard drive is not a valid Windows XP system image". Eventually I managed to get it installed after another couple of formats. Then when Windows was about to start it crashed out to a blue screen saying: "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" along with other things. I formatted again and at the same blue screen after this install I received this message of death! "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA". I understand these could be problems with memory maybe, but I tried my memory and my graphics card in my friends PC and it worked fine, however I did not install the drivers for my card as I was scared of wrecking his PC! When I had Windows ME I had no problems whatsoever, yet now it is a complete nightmare, and the only things I have done is partitioned the hard drive. I am tempted to buy another motherboard and graphics card but I realise I could just end up in the same boat. I have tried to install Win Me after formatting the hard disk to FAT32 in XP setup, but I get an error message basically saying I do not have enough disk page to install this. As you can see I am not brilliant with PC's so maybe I should just take it to an expert and bite the bullet. The other thing I have also done is flash the BIOS to a later version, but again this made no difference. Is it possible my hard disk is corrupt through partitioning, or broken totally? Any ideas please!

[Statica]

How are you installing XP? You mentioned you formatted and then reinstalled. Have you deleted all your previous partitions? During the select partition screen of XP - make sure you first delete all the partitions make your drive one big unpartitioned space. Then create the partitions you need.

Now regarding getting issues after installing Kazaa .. *shrug* .. I know of people who consider Kazaa a virus; so you might want to look into getting an alternate P2P client.

And regarding installing detonator drivers. I'd recommend first installing the XP drivers that came with the video card .. make sure everything is working well; then proceed with creating a system restore point and then install the new drivers. that way you can at least roll back with some degree of success.

[darkmessenger03]

Instead of Kazaa, use Kazaalite. It's Kazaa without the spyware and extra junk, you can get it from http://www.kazaalite.com

[davsl]

Thanks for both the tips, I will try them later. I did not format my hard disk the way statica has said. I just formatted the main partition C: So I will try removing the partitions and formatting the lot and just pray basically, thanks for the tip. Kazaalite is also a good idea to cut down on all the crap that comes with normal kazaa. Thanks again

[davsl]

My problem is sorted I hope, well has been very stable for a few hours. The cause appears to have been a 256 MB DDR RAM DIMM. I have 2 of these by different manufacturers, I removed one of them and tried to reinstall XP and it was no better, I then removed the other and it was spot on. The Dimm in question is an Elixir one, which I thought were supposed to be good! The other one is unbranded cheapo stuff but at least it works. Maybe the Elixir just does not work with my system components and XP, as it only seemed to mess up when I installed this supposedly stable platform. Think I will just buy one quality 512 MB Dimm by Crucial or somebody, I have seen a cheap Micron one on Ebay, anyone know if this is any good? Although on Ebay I often think there are people on there trying to off-load their rubbish!