xp wont start

[mikeybude25]

Ok recently my brothers p.c has been doing a lot of memory dumps, and try as we might we havent been able to find out why!, tried a number of forums, but nothing worked. Anyway, he tried to turn it on the other day and windows xp will not start!

It gets as far as the windows xp is loading and then after a few minutes, a blue screen flashes up for about 0.1 of a second and then the computer reboots and goes round in this loop.

tried re-installing windows by booting from the windows cd, but it just says there is a error and windows can not be installed (thanks M$ very helpfull!) tried repairing windows xp, same error. even tried formatting the HDD from the repair console, it gets to 100% formatted tells me its complete, yet the damn thing is lieing to me because everything is still on the HDD!

Also tried booting into safemode, but that just hangs and doesnt even get as far as the "loading xp" screen

Any help would be great thanks Mike

P.S his system specs are as follows

windows xp home
512mb ram
200GB HHD (deskstar)
p4 3.06Ghz

 

[GeforcebOY1]

Sorry i don't know what to sugest other than try to get anyother OS installed and see if it work other then xp.

 

[BigDaddy1]

Ditto that...maybe put a different HDD from a friends computer to make sure there is not problems outside of your hard drive. Or put it in another box as a slave and format it from Windows.

 

[Lord Kalthorn]

Yeah - another Hard Drive would be pretty good to see if its the Hardware thats doing it?

 

[Academy]

I have had a similar problem install Win XP, The fault
turned out to be an intermittent HDD power failure.

Replaced the HDD, installed & worked fine.

Have you tried another Win XP CD?

Is your HDD setup in BIOS?

 

[David Lindon]

Try formatting it with something else like linux and then you will be able to re-install windows properly.

 

[Lord Kalthorn]

The Windows XP Formatting has never not worked for me - and I've used it many many times. Weird I suppose.