Is it both my HDs or the OS or the mobo?

[splash]

Need help this weekend while surfing the web I had firefox give a fatal error messeage I haven't ever seen before. Had to do a hard reboot and windows would not stay stable. Finally I did a image restore from Acronis Home 2009. It too wouldn't stay stable. So I decide to reinstall XP and I have tried like 8 times to do this ( I even tried installing it on my second hard drive that I use for file backup only ). It will format the hard drive BUT while installing the setup files it give me BSOD with messages like:

The login user interface DLL failed to load.

increase the size of your virtual memory paging file.

page_fault_in_nonpage_area

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

wiavusd.dll was not copied correctly

and I got this MANY times NTLDR is missing.

Does this have something to do with not clearing the CMOS on the mobo?

Sorry I am a newbie and seem to know just about enough to get myself in trouble... THANKS IN ADVANCE TO ALL THAT TRY TO HELP!

P.S. Could this be that my dick copy of XP has gone back some how?

[DeaconFrost]

It could be possible your XP CD is scratched, but that wouldn't explain why your images failed. I would probably run Memtest first, and then run the diag tool for your hard drive to see if either fail.

[Azhar]

do a chkdsk in the repair console to check your drive for bad sectors

[Dez Perado]

First, If you are overclocking any components then restore everything to normal settings.

Because you have the problem with two different hard drives the common components are motherboard and RAM, assuming use of an onboard SATA controller.

The component most likely to fail is the RAM. Make certain you have disabled any "quick" POST option in the BIOS until the problem is resolved. Then, as DF sugggested, run memtest. Also, try reseating the RAM. If you can boot with only one RAM stick try each one by itself.

[splash]

Thanks I didn't have a chance to work on it last night but I appreciate the advice!

I haven't over clocked anything!

[Slade]

I'd say something in the system is failing, ie ram, mobo or cpu. Copy operations are pretty low on the system usage scale so the only thing that could wreck it is a failing component. I'd actually try testing various components. Since you've got a way online, find and download the ultimate boot CD and do some diagnostics.

CPU instability usually causes hard locks, but since dual cores have come on scene, I've found that CPU instability can be "masked". RAM issues typically cause corrupt data type errors that results in BSOD and copy errors more often than not. Non overclocked systems rarely have mobo NB and SB failures but I wouldn't discount either say if the NB or SB cooler broke off.

[Joe Average]

Page faults are ~99% of the time RAM related, do a full memtest86+ run (that means hours of testing, not 1 cycle, etc).

IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN errors are ~99% of the time driver related, not sure what to tell you if they just started happening out of the blue except for possible data corruption - run the hard drive diagnostic from the manufacturer of the hard drive, the full/thorough test with the surface scan also and see what it tells you. Don't use any diagnostic but the one from the manufacturer - that's the only one you can really trust to any useful degree.

By "dick copy" I'm inclined to believe it's a hack(ed) copy you acquired online someplace; if that's true, this ends the support. If it's not true and it's a legit unhacked totally clean copy from retail or OEM media, I'd still suspect the RAM first, the hard drive second, then perhaps virus activity screwing things up.

[splash]

Page faults are ~99% of the time RAM related, do a full memtest86+ run (that means hours of testing, not 1 cycle, etc).

IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN errors are ~99% of the time driver related, not sure what to tell you if they just started happening out of the blue except for possible data corruption - run the hard drive diagnostic from the manufacturer of the hard drive, the full/thorough test with the surface scan also and see what it tells you. Don't use any diagnostic but the one from the manufacturer - that's the only one you can really trust to any useful degree.

By "dick copy" I'm inclined to believe it's a hack(ed) copy you acquired online someplace; if that's true, this ends the support. If it's not true and it's a legit unhacked totally clean copy from retail or OEM media, I'd still suspect the RAM first, the hard drive second, then perhaps virus activity screwing things up.


Joe you are the winner! It was the memory sticks! I'll check that first next time I have problems.

Hey I downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD and I can't get my system to boot from it. I'm sure I missing a step here. When I unzip the file it's just a iso file, is there suppose to a boot.ini file to go along with it. I went into the BIOS to have it boot from cd first and still nothing. Someone has to know this answer!

[Joe Average]

Joe you are the winner! It was the memory sticks! I'll check that first next time I have problems.

Hey I downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD and I can't get my system to boot from it. I'm sure I missing a step here. When I unzip the file it's just a iso file, is there suppose to a boot.ini file to go along with it. I went into the BIOS to have it boot from cd first and still nothing. Someone has to know this answer!

There are two versions:

UBCD is a DOS-based command line style tool (with utilities) for using your computer in case of a "meltdown" - if you've used DOS in the past it'll look really familiar. This sounds like what you may have acquired, and while it's fairly useful, the next one is far superior.

Then there's UBCD4Win which is a micro-Windows XP environment (based on WinPE using BartPE to create it) which you have to build yourself. You download an installer file, run it, it'll download and do checksums on all the files, when it's complete it'll then offer you a set of menu options with all the possible software/utilities you can have on that disc when it's complete so you pick and choose what you do and don't want.

When that process is complete, it'll build a directory that contains all the content and information necessary to make an ISO file for you that you can then burn to a CD (CD-RW is good for this stuff because you may want to rebuild it later on with newer versions). Because the files exist on the drive in a single directory, you can also use another tool called PE2USB that will take those files and content and put them on a USB stick and make it bootable; in the end you can have not only a bootable CD but also the exact same thing on a bootable USB stick.

Not every machine can boot from a USB port/device, but if you have a machine that can, it's faster to use the USB stick version obviously. It's nice to be able to create both, so that's what I did/do, and customize it even more than UBCD4Win allows (been doing these things for a long damned time now).

Good luck...

[splash]

There are two versions:

UBCD is a DOS-based command line style tool (with utilities) for using your computer in case of a "meltdown" - if you've used DOS in the past it'll look really familiar. This sounds like what you may have acquired, and while it's fairly useful, the next one is far superior.

Then there's UBCD4Win which is a micro-Windows XP environment (based on WinPE using BartPE to create it) which you have to build yourself. You download an installer file, run it, it'll download and do checksums on all the files, when it's complete it'll then offer you a set of menu options with all the possible software/utilities you can have on that disc when it's complete so you pick and choose what you do and don't want.

When that process is complete, it'll build a directory that contains all the content and information necessary to make an ISO file for you that you can then burn to a CD (CD-RW is good for this stuff because you may want to rebuild it later on with newer versions). Because the files exist on the drive in a single directory, you can also use another tool called PE2USB that will take those files and content and put them on a USB stick and make it bootable; in the end you can have not only a bootable CD but also the exact same thing on a bootable USB stick.

Not every machine can boot from a USB port/device, but if you have a machine that can, it's faster to use the USB stick version obviously. It's nice to be able to create both, so that's what I did/do, and customize it even more than UBCD4Win allows (been doing these things for a long damned time now).

Good luck...

Joe thanks again. I'll be busy tonight....