Problem booting Win XP Home

[Megashrap]

Ok, here's the deal. I've loaded a legit copy of XP Home. The problem i'm having is when it boots I get the F8 screen...were you choose safe mode,last known good config. etc. When I try any of these options it just re-boots and does the same. This is on another pc btw. What i've tried so far...

taking that HDD out,putting it in my good pc as a slave to my other HDD and image copy disc to disc.

formatting, I try to re-install XP from a fresh low-level format but I get errors in a few minutes installing it. I used the Maxtor utility floppy and run a full disc scan, and it says its just fine with no errors.

Any ideas would be much appreciated. Scar.

[gryphon]

I try to re-install XP from a fresh low-level format but I get errors in a few minutes installing it.

What happends when you do a fresh install ?

[Megashrap]

When it gets past the initial blue screen setup, it gets some error and I end up having to stop installation as my only choice. And this is from a bought XP cd.

[gryphon]

please define that "some error" part.. ..

[Megashrap]

I really don't know what it said unless I try and reinstall xp again.

However,I think I may have fixed it, but i'm not sure till I let it run for a day or so. Here's what I think the problem was. It had 2 kingston 512 ddr pc 3200 in it. But upon reading the manual for this motherboard,I noticed that it states when installing the memory, it has to be the one sided modules, not say 8 modules 4 on each side of the stick if you know what I mean.

luckily I had the one sided sticks in my other pc so I used 1 of those in the messed up pc... and it booted up normally and is now working.

I hope that makes sense. So now it is just using 1 stick of 512 ddr pc 3200. So far so good...knock wood. I also think that one of those 2 sided module sticks are bad because when I tried it in my good pc alone, it didn't boot and I got error beeps. I'll send that one back since kingston has lifetime warranty on them,but i'm fairly sure it's bad.

Also,the HDD had around 380kb of bad sectors, but I fixed that as well after doing a low-level format. All in all I do think now it was a memory issue...but correct me if you think otherwise.

              Scar.

[Megashrap]

I was right about the memory somewhat. It seems that Newegg sent me 2 512/DDR 400 pc 3200 sticks Value Ram. Now when looking at them, they look identical. However, after looking closer under a bright light on the modules, they are different...they both have 8 modules on both sides, but the numbers are different along with the way they are schematically done. The good news is that Kingston, after calling them and speaking with one of their techs. a few times agree,and are sending me a brand new totally matching pair for my mainboard.... all free of charge.  I guess someone at neweggg was in a rush and acc. grabbed the wrong stick. Thank God Kingston stands by it's 100% lifetime guarantee on it's memory. The RMA was smooth as hell to do just had to print 1 sheet put my addy on it, and all free of any charges. Should get my new 2 sticks around the 17th. So all in all it boiled down to  an incompatibility issue rather than dead memory.

[Andrew]

So you are shipping back the ram they originally shipped you? Or you keep that as well?