Can't boot, can't install

[Wiseguy2001]

I don't know what else to do.

I friend of the family phoned said there pc wasn't booting. From what they described if sounded like the hard drive corruption. Tried booting no luck not even safe mode, tried the xp cd, copied the drivers across the froze when it said installing windows. So I got the data off asap (I fairly big company who kept all the business critical data on a single pc without any backups ). Luckily their file seemed fine.

Anyway I put a new hard drive in and I still couldn't install windows (using my own xp disk), same error as before, So I tried a knoppix boot cd to see if that worked, even that froze. I took all the pci cards out (modem, wireless nic), even reset the bios and tried a new battery; same sh**.

Burnt a ultimate boot cd, works fine went though some diagnostics/ stress tests (cpu, memory, pci cards, vga, AV) all ok.

I'm all out of options and ideas, oh and it stops on mup.sys which doesn't really help narrowing down the problem. Also I haven't flashed the bios because of lack of floppy drvies, but I can't see how upgrading to a newer version would fix it.

Any ideas?

edit: I've also searched these forums and come up with this, but that doesn't explain why it still doesn't work with a new drive.

 

[digital_exhaust]

I know you ran some stress tests and all, but I would try memtest. Run it and see if it reports any errors. It really sounds like fried ram to me.

 

[Chernobyl1]

It seems clear that you have a hardware issue of some form.
Swap bits out and test.

If its stable enough to blow the latest bios, I'd do that, maybe it will clear up the hardware issue.
You can boot from a DOS hard drive (and maybe USB drive if the machine can boot them) with the BIOS utils on. No floppy required.

 

[Wiseguy2001]

Cheers, guys thanks for the input. I ran a pass of memtest but after what you said I went a ran 3 passes. It was fine. I've even tried different ram and gpu's.

I don't get this the error is systematic, I reckon it could be the bios. I'll give that a shot when I get back.

If that doesn't work I'll put a very large hammer through it, pics will follow naturally, its personal now.