Topic: Confused to what I did so long ago.

[vashcloud]

Well, months ago my desktop Compaq Presario started to restarted on its own. After a few weeks I was unable to stop it and it came to the point were everytime I would turn it on it would restart as soon as Compaq's logo came up.
I formated both my C and D drive thanks to the help of a computer wiz friend of mine and got the system running again. However, it happen all over again and this time I cant start windows at all. I have a new laptop but I want to fix my old PC to give to my Niece as a present. However, no matter what I try it will not work.
My laptop is a HP pavilion and its Operting system Win XP Home Edition will let the Compaq boot from it, however it restarts as soon as loading windows appears. In Dos, I can only get the A, C, and D drives and my A drive seems to be connected to my once F drive now. However, the computer doesnt see a F or E drive. I have no idea what to do. Is there anything I can do to save this PC?

[joudi]

Hi vashcloud and welcome to PC-PALS    

Just some questions till a proper techie shows:

  - Have you ever thought to format the hard disk and reinstall windows?

  - Do you have Windows update "SP2" intalled already on your PC?

  - Did that start to happen after installing a certain program which, maybe caused a conflict?  (or maybe uninstalling a program which caused it.)

  - Did you try to disconnect the external connected machines to your PC to see if one of them maybe causing it?

  - What about the inner components, are they all well inserted in their place?


A proper techie will certainly go more directly than me to the possible cause. If not, it could be useful to give some information about points like these.

Not recognizing some partitions (or drives) means to me that the best option is to format your hard drive and reinstall windows on it.

Good chance...

Techies will be here soon to care for your case.    

[Sandra]

Can you get it to start in safe mode or does it restart before you can do that ?
Was it ok after you formatted and reinstalled windows until you connected to the net ? If so you may have the blaster worm  

[vashcloud]

The computer is based on Windows 98 SE, I updated it to XP professional and it worked fine for many months.
1) Yes, I did format the drives and wasnt able to use my Windows 98 CD to restore it, so I used the XP cd and it worked fine for a day, then it died again.
2) It was installed on it at the time, however, not no more.
3) That I know it wasnt because I dont install programs on my PC unless I restore it or add a new operating system.
4) There were no other machines connected to it.
5) Yes, the only thing ive installed maunally is the RAM and it works fine.

6) Safe mode, safe mode with networking, safe mode with command promt, Last good condition, and normaling starting it will only cause it to restart again.
7) Yes, it was ok for a day and I did get back on the internet as soon as I fixed it to updated it.

[Sandra]

I looks like it picked something up off the net when you were updating rather than equipment failure.
Unfortunatley if it wont even stay running in safe mode you wont be able to do a virus scan to try and detect and delete it  
I think that you may have to format and install your OS again and make sure that the first thing you do after installing the OS is to install your AV program and then update that when you connect to the net before you update the OS and add other programs, unless anyone has a better idea  

[Simon]

If the problem is the MS Blaster worm, use another machine to download the Blaster Worm patch from the link below, and save it on a floppy disc, then when you have installed Windows, install the patch before doing anything else![/b]  Make sure you have the Windows firewall running (for now), and have your AntiVirus software installed, and that should keep you safe enough to get the rest of your updates.

Blaster Worm Patch

If you can somehow get it to stay running for long enough, you may be able to use the Symantec Blaster Worm Removal Tool from here.

[vashcloud]

How do I format my drive? I dont know how to do that without my friends help and I cant talk to him for weeks. Also, My OS is a system recovery disk and it cant find factory restore or user restore, so it doesnt work.

[Sandra]

Are you going to use the XP cd ?
Set the bios to boot from the cd as the first boot device, access bios usually by hitting the DELETE button repeatedly as soon as the pc starts up, some pcs use F2.
Restart the pc with the xp cd in the drive, when it says press any key to boot from cd rom press any key.
Just follow the onscreen instructions. It will format the partition before it starts to install XP  

[joudi]

For problems like that, I don't trust in the XP CD to format the drive correctly, as it tends often to leave some elements of the old OS which was installed before.

Maybe you can advice him a way Sandra, to get through the net (somewhere) "Partition Magic" to be more sure that his drive is correctly formated.

[vashcloud]

Ok, i did that. But it restarts as I am doing it, and when it finally gets to windows loading *blue screen still* it restarts! Im tempted to throw it to the dogs.. -_- :-[

[vashcloud]

Also, on formating my drive. My friend said type in format C: and i did and it wouldnt do it. My C: dir has no files, did i format it right? How do you format it?

[Simon]

The two links below might help:-  

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313348

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255867

[Sandra]

Which OS are you wanting to reinstall after you have formatted  
XP will format it for you before it installs whereas you need to format the drive first from a boot disk if youre going to use 98  

[vashcloud]

I dont have a boot disk. I have a Compaq restore disk but it doesnt work. XP will not give me the option of formating, at least I havent seen it. And with it in my CD-drive it gets to 'inspecting system configuration' and restarts. Also, i have 320 MB of RAM and it says '164 memory error'.

[Sandra]

Ok have a look at this page :

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

Follow the steps from about half way down starting with :
If your computer is capable of booting from a CD-ROM drive and you would rather install using this method, then :

If it still restarts during this then you either have a hardware problem or its incompatable with XP