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So I'm having a problem with a friend of mine's computer; really, it's driving me nuts.
it's some junky emachine. He said a few months ago the cdrw stopped reading any discs - so when he signed up for cable modem service they were unable to install the usb drivers to use it via usb - and there's no nic installed. The drive is seen in xp home - just... when you double click the drive with a disc in it you get a blank directory listing - no errors or anything. Really, the system is just overly slow and not working as it should. He had spyware/viruses etc definatelly. It's a 1ghz with 512mb ram and 20gb HD (like 15gb free) onboard video etc.
First thing I wanted to see... if the cd drive would boot an xp (or any bootable cd) and... well it didn't - tried changing ide cables - channels etc etc. So I put in a dvd drive I had (known working) and it still didn't. So I manually disabled the harddrive from booting and ONLY the dvd drive to boot - and that was fine to boot. But when I tried this with the original cdrw drive still no go.
So under the asumption that the drive was bad, and using my known good dvd drive I proceeded to boot from a winxp home disc (came withe computer) to format and install xp. Everything starts fine, formats fine etc, but eventually I start getting errors during the install that file "whatever" couldn't copy or wasn't found etc - I tried this 3 times with the same results, but different files.
Thinking this was a memory problem maybe, I booted up with a memtest86 bootable cd and after 10min there were no problems found (and actually the 2x256mb DIMMS in the computer were some I had put in a few months ago that were known-good)
So now I'm kind of stumped. Computer will not boot from cd unless the HD is disabled as a bootable item - OS will not install - but mem and system in general seem fine. What should I be expected to be the next step? try a different HD? or am I looking at a more serious MB/PWS or other problem... Looking at the board, there's no bad capacitors or anything; the fan on the cpu is kinda junked up, but the heatsink is pretty cool to the touch despite poor airflow from the fan.
it's some junky emachine. He said a few months ago the cdrw stopped reading any discs - so when he signed up for cable modem service they were unable to install the usb drivers to use it via usb - and there's no nic installed. The drive is seen in xp home - just... when you double click the drive with a disc in it you get a blank directory listing - no errors or anything. Really, the system is just overly slow and not working as it should. He had spyware/viruses etc definatelly. It's a 1ghz with 512mb ram and 20gb HD (like 15gb free) onboard video etc.
First thing I wanted to see... if the cd drive would boot an xp (or any bootable cd) and... well it didn't - tried changing ide cables - channels etc etc. So I put in a dvd drive I had (known working) and it still didn't. So I manually disabled the harddrive from booting and ONLY the dvd drive to boot - and that was fine to boot. But when I tried this with the original cdrw drive still no go.
So under the asumption that the drive was bad, and using my known good dvd drive I proceeded to boot from a winxp home disc (came withe computer) to format and install xp. Everything starts fine, formats fine etc, but eventually I start getting errors during the install that file "whatever" couldn't copy or wasn't found etc - I tried this 3 times with the same results, but different files.
Thinking this was a memory problem maybe, I booted up with a memtest86 bootable cd and after 10min there were no problems found (and actually the 2x256mb DIMMS in the computer were some I had put in a few months ago that were known-good)
So now I'm kind of stumped. Computer will not boot from cd unless the HD is disabled as a bootable item - OS will not install - but mem and system in general seem fine. What should I be expected to be the next step? try a different HD? or am I looking at a more serious MB/PWS or other problem... Looking at the board, there's no bad capacitors or anything; the fan on the cpu is kinda junked up, but the heatsink is pretty cool to the touch despite poor airflow from the fan.
