Hi I have a big problem with my PC I originaly had winME on the system, I purchased a copy of winXP and installed. The computer continually locked up even with solitare. I addressed the heat issue, cleaned dust & contacts and checked fans, it has a cpu heat sink fan and case fan (both work), besides sometimes it locked up within 1 min of use after it was off overnight. So I reformated the hard drive and tried to reinstall winxp. Now it will not install. it starts to, says its done, but then will not boot from hard drive because files are missing (that's if it doesn't lock up somewhere in the install process). Put a new hard drive in but does the same thing. It had even locked up once while formating the new hard drive, and that was with the Western digital formating software not the windows XP disk. Of course I tried again and it formated fine? I guess i'm not sure what to pin the problem on, BIOS, motherboard, memory, cables. I do occastionally get a fatal error message, it says something like, I should try uninstalling any new software, hardware or disable BIOS memory caching or shadowing? not really sure how to do that and don't really think it will work. there is no new software, and I'm not sure how far to go back in the hardware installation, i've added, then unadded and changed many devices. I have always had a lock up issue with the computer, thought it was winMe (sorry for all the bad things I said about Me), but never anything even close to this. Thanks for any help or ideas anyone might have. Huey40
reseat all cables, cards & ram. take a pencil eraser to the gold contacts on the ram sticks to remove oxidation off them as had a similar problem with 2 computers.
Actually I have done that twice. except the erase to the contacts, only did that once. Do you turn off the caching and shadowing in the Bios setup, that is, is it in the setup after using F1 at startup? I am also going to try to disconnect some things that are not needed for the installation. Does anyone think that different brands of memory can be a problem? that is they were all purchased at different times. They are all the same size, 128 mb.
if running in me with no problems than should work in xp. do not turn off the cpu cache as it will knock the performance by about half & you do that in the bios. look at the motherboard at the can shaped objects, they are capacitors & should be all flat topped not domed!!
It's been a year since I ran Me, there were always hang-ups Me related I think again. But you are right it should be working! I have left caching and shadowing on and played with the hardware instead. Just now I have left the new HD in and diconnected the older original CD-RW and am only using the newer CD-ROM, I also put both on the same IDE and selected Master and Slave instead of CS select. Also I have removed the original memory stick and am only using the two newer memory sticks. I think the hang ups during setup are gone, and windows does install. But when it tries to boot windows from the HD after intial file installation I get a missing system32/hal.dll file message, so I am going to try and install using different HAL file formats? I have to guess at some possibilities.
have you tried installing xp from scratch since you started having this problem or just doing the repair option??
Thanks ddp! It did lead me to the correction, only a little differently. The first thing I did was to diable the extendaded memory recall in the bios, which would retain information on previously used configurations. Then I had to format the new hard drive from the Western Digital disk (would never work with WinXp CD partitioning and formating, even when limiting the partition to 135 Gig) with ddo (dynamic drive overlay). The important thing was to make sure the WinXp cd was not in the cd drive and then boot the computer so it initiallized from the HD not the CD. After the Blue ddo screen, select C to boot from cd then install the WinXP cd in drive. Basically the ddo needs to be initialized before booting from the cd. Also the cd needed to be removed after initial setup files were installed and the system rebooted, and then replaced in the drive after intialization from HD to complete the installation. Now all I have to do is figure out which hardware component was the initial hang up problem, or maybe I'll just leave it the way it is. Thanks for all your help ddp, it did help me work through my problems
