My brothers computer has gone HAYWIRE

A

Atooraya

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2002
Messages
175
I don't understand wtf is going on.

Ok, it started a few days ago when he got the blue screen and it said "unrecognizable boot volume".
So i thought maybe something on his HD messed up, but i plugged it into my computer and it worked! I even backed up his files onto my computer!

So i went ahead, and put in the windows xp sp2 CD and i reformatted his entire drive into one partition with a full format of NTFS.

I tried installing windows, and then i got an error of windows couldn't install because of something missing in D:\something something.apx. I did some research on google and found it to be either the CD-R or the Windows CD.

So i reburned windows, and it INSTALLED! But now here's the thing, windows works, but when the computer restarts, it says "Please insert boot cd" or something saying that it needs the CD to boot windows again!. Also, it takes REALLY long to start up! The HP flash screen takes a minute to go away and it takes about 3 minutes just to tell me to put in the boot CD.

Any ideas? I'm ready to just throw it out the window!
 
Well you can narrow down the HD or the install of Windows. Without any more information I'ed say that this is a hardware problem, but I don't know enough troubleshooting to try and figure out what the problem is. Maybe power supply or motherboard? I really don't know but I doubt that its the HDD considering that you put it in your box and it worked just fine.
 
Gnu314 said:
Well you can narrow down the HD or the install of Windows. Without any more information I'ed say that this is a hardware problem, but I don't know enough troubleshooting to try and figure out what the problem is. Maybe power supply or motherboard? I really don't know but I doubt that its the HDD considering that you put it in your box and it worked just fine.
Click to expand...
Which is nuts
 
Your going to have to try and isolate the problem by removing all unnesesary devices. Then pull the ram 1 at a time and try starting it up. If you have it, try another power supply as well. If the problem persist than it's either the MB, HD, or CPU.
 
ok, here's something crazy as well.

he's in windows now, installing rome:total war, and everything is okay...he's even connected to the internet...WTF?

i think it MIGHT actually be something with the RAM. i added another 512MB stick to his PC about 2 mos ago??

so now, the only problem is it takes for EVER to launch windows, and to even launch it, you have to put the CD in.
 
This is very clearly a ram issue, memtest and youll find hundreds if not thousands of errors im betting
 
jbrukardt said:
This is very clearly a ram issue, memtest and youll find hundreds if not thousands of errors im betting
Click to expand...

That would be my first guess...
 
jbrukardt said:
This is very clearly a ram issue, memtest and youll find hundreds if not thousands of errors im betting
Click to expand...
that's what i'm thinking to now

they're too totally different Memory chips :eek:
 
Why as why? Just happens, especially with generic ram. There must have been other sign before this such as sudden restarts or games closing suddenly. Some sort of instability must have been going on prior to this.

I once bought some generic ram for my Father in law that failed almost a year later. There were signs before the big failure. Have you checked the memory yet.
 
James24 said:
Why as why? Just happens, especially with generic ram. There must have been other sign before this such as sudden restarts or games closing suddenly. Some sort of instability must have been going on prior to this.

I once bought some generic ram for my Father in law that failed almost a year later. There were signs before the big failure. Have you checked the memory yet.
Click to expand...
not yet

his computer is working perfectly fine for some reason

but i should just run memtest86 right?
 
You definitely should run Memtest. Memtest alerted me to the failure of one of my 512MB Ram sticks. Good thing too because that was my only RAM stick avaliable. If the ram had completely died, I would've been screwed. But ordered a pair of 256MB sticks and three days later, comp was fine.

Oh crap I'm rambling, go run Memtest.
 
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