Reinstalling Windows Formatting Error

[Jab]

Hi,

I have come in search of some help, i recently posted stating that my computer was being a pain in the arse. Many suggestions were to reformat and reinstall windows.

Today i had finally finished backing up all my stuff onto an external hard drive, however my attempt to install windows has not been at all good.

I get quite easily to the place where you need to format the hard drive - NTFS formatting - not the quick one, i get to around 25%. At this point my computer crashes, occasionally when this occurs, i get the blue screen

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL this usually occurs with Stop 0000000... underneath, however it has had atapi.sys there too.

Anyone know whats going on here? i have taken out the RAM that i placed in there, fearing it maybe bad. Could this be my hard drive? Graphics Card?

Someone even suggested it could be my heatsink fan - which ill admit has been playing up slightly - temperature inside occasionally reaches 90C.

Is my PC completely down the sh*tter?

Cheers

Jab

 

[Raffaz]

Can you give me your system specs, and the exact error, we need the whole STOP code and the full atapi. sys error

 

[Jab]

hi,

I just tried to run windows XP installation once again, however this time i got to around 50%, then a windows screen came up and said;

Windows is not able to format this disk, it maybe damaged, please use another partition to format.

I havent got any other partition, so do i have to now buy a new hard drive?

cheers
jab

Edit: forgot to post my specs - as far as i can remember
AMD Athlon 3200 2.19 GHz
512MB RAm
Nvidia Geforce 5800XT 128MB
160GB Hard drive NTFS

 

[Raffaz]

Ok, goto the HDD manufacturers website, and download their diagnostic tools and run them. If ya drive has errors this tool will show them

 

[Jab]

Can this be run directly from the start up screen?

Just placed onto a CD and run from boot?

 

[Raffaz]

Yeah basically you create a bootable disc and boot the CD up just like ya do with ya XP disc mate

 

[Jab]

right, i have carried out the DFT program for my hard disc, which stated that it had repaired the hard disc. However i still suffer from the same problem!

Gets to about 50/60% then crashes.

Any thoughts?

 

[Raffaz]

Try running a low level format on the disk from the diagnostic tool. That sometimes clears the problems up (all ya data will be lost)

 

[Jab]

I had a look on the program, and it only suggests scanning the disk, or Erasing Boot Disk and Erasing everything? will i need to click this before it lets me reformat?

when you say all my data will be lost, are you refering to the set up of the Pc itself or the content i have in windows?

 

[Raffaz]

What software are ya running?