Hey guys,Here is my long drawn out "history" if you will on what I did to my computer over this past weekend.First, my system specs at the moment, as I would like to put down "the facks, and just the facks" :-)Mother Board: ASUS CVU..something (don't have the exact number)Processor: PIII 933 (no overclocking or any crazy stuff like that)Memory: To start 384 (A stick of 256 in slot 0 and 128 in slot 1, PC-133, SDR DIMMS)Netgear FA311 NICGeforce II MX 400 in agp slotGeforce II 200 or something in one PCI slot. (Running Dual Monitors)SB Audigy Sound cardA 40x Master CD-ROM only (not a burner)A 24x4x40 Cendyne CD-R/RW SlaveOne 5400 RPM 12 GB drive with about 4 or 5 GBs room left. (Master)One 40 GB 7200 RPM drive with about 20 GB left on it. (Slave)Had a 250 Watt 3.5 year old power supplyNow have a 350 brand new power supply.No Operating system at present, which I will explain below.I think that covers everything for the system specs. I have a home built computer that is a hodge podge of components that I have added over the years. Here is what happened to my computer...I thought it would be a good idea to get some more RAM for my computer and Circuit City had a good price. I picked up a PNY SDR PC-133, 256 MB stick and put it in my computer. I put it in slot 1 and moved the 128 stick to slot 2 leaving the older 265 stick in slot 0, my computer has 4 slots and I understand it is a good idea to have the highest memory sticks first. My BIOS loaded and showed the full 640 MBs of RAM after POST and I thought all was well. After Windows XP loaded, my computer randomly started to restart. It seemed to be related to IE, but other programs would cause this to happen as well.Just to back up for a second, Windows is loaded on my older 12 GB hard drive and most of my programs are loaded on my newer < year old 40 GB drive. Recently I removed the Norton Internet Security program and went back to Zone Alarm instead. Another thing that I noticed was that Explorer would ramdonly have errors and generate that error report thing. IE would not start, and Netscape would not load. It seemed to me that something maybe with the network settings got currupted after the Norton Firewall program was removed. And I thought that the Random Restarts were caused by the new stick of RAM I put in. (I wish I would have known about the system recovery console at the time which I have read about this morning as far as the programs are concerned.) The other idea I had causing the problems was a failing power supply. My original one is only 250 watts and I have dual CD-ROMS, dual HDs, dual video cards and they take a lot of juice. I pick up new 350 watt one and that did not stop the problems. I pulled out the new stick of RAM and it seemed to not ramdonly restart, but my programs' errors kept getting worse. I decided to format down my harddrive and reinstall Windows 98. (probably a bad idea) Now, with Win98 things seemed to be back to pretty much normal. I did notice that at one point I reveived one of those BSODs saying that I had a C: drive write error. My computer completly locked up. My C: (old 12 GB HD) is about 4 years old and I thought at this time maybe that was causing the problem. Like it was going bad or something. The new memory was not installed at the time I had Windows 98 installed. My hard drive seemed to make a wierd clicking sound, and it is quite loud during normal read / writing. It was a different sound, almost like it was hanging or something. So AH HA! I thought, my old HD is going bad. No problem, I will try to install WIN XP on my newer hard drive and disconnect the old HD and not use it at all. I also thought that the new memory was not the cause of the problem of random restarts as well, so I put the memory back in. I determined that the old HD failing and this triggered WIN XP to auto restart. So, reinstalled WIN XP on the newer HD. What does it do right after the first sucessful load? Restarts after about 10 secs. :-( I guess I didn't think about removing the new PNY memory and going back to the same RAM config as before. I think I was afraid of more restarts at random intervals like before. Also, during the boot from the WIn XP CD install, some files could not copy correctly, a friend on mine said for me to clean the CD. I don't think that after about 3 reinstalls Microsoft would do or have the capibility to cause random errors for piracy or something? I thought that this was odd. I could hit ENTER and get most of them to load, but some didn't, one was the NTFS.sys file I remember, it always seemed to be the same files. I am not currently running NTFS on any HDs, just FAT 32. So at this point I am convinced that the memory is the culprit and I have a bad hard drive. As a side note...With Win 98 was running I spend quite a few hours reinstalling drivers (such a fun thing to do :-() and loading and downloading programs. I tried to reattach my old drive, boot in 98 (which still resided on that drive) and copy all of my files over to the new drive before it completly craps out. Well, I guess I didn't realize you can't just copy an OS over to an new drive and expect it to work.As I type this I have come to a couple of possibilities and conclusions. First, my old HD is about to crap out and I shouldn't rely on it any more. Second, I don't think my computer will be stable with the new momory and I should just return it to the store and get a refund. Third, I can try to reinstall Windowx XP for the forth time and see if it will run with some stability with out restarting at random.Forth, I could go back to Win 98, which is not even the second edition and very unstable. I am sure that I could have approached this whole issue in a different manner but this is everything I can think of. I an by no means a computer expert and as you can see, what I do know got me into trouble. It all comes dowm to that old saying, "if it is not broken, don't fix it.So I guess, if anyone has any ideas I am open for anything. I know that this is a long drawn out mess and I can clarify anything if need be. What course of action do you folks think I should do?Thanks for reading this whole mess and thanks for your thoughts :-)Sincerely,-C.J. Starr

Well, it seems you have had all the fun you can handle and now it is time to troubleshoot the problem!!:-lolACT I, Scene 1You old hardrive may be on it last legs but who knows! I recommend you install this drive, doesn't have to be permanent, can hang out if you are certain it isn't going to fall, short-out, etc. I would also remove the new ram and place the old ran in its original slot. Restart the computer and see if it runs, let it cook for awhile, to see if you get reboots. If after an hour or so, it still cookin with Windows, shutdown the computer.Unplug the old ram, install the new ram in the same slot. Restart the computer and cook somemore! If stable for awhile, shutdown the computer.Leave the new ram in the slot and install the old ram in another slot. Restart the computer and cook! If stable for awhile, shutdown the computer.If the computer becomes unstable with both RAM sticks installed, you may have a mismatch of RAM. One of the type of mismatch is ECC and non-ECC (Error Correction Capability or some such). Generally, you can't run them together. Sometimes in BIOS, there is a switch to turn off ECC when you have both types installed. If you think this may be the case, search the BIOS for that switch. Otherwise, take out the smallest RAM stick and leave the largest since more memory is usually better (unless you are up on charges then "I don't recall" is a good answer).Act I, Scene 2Assuming the computer is now stable with either 1 or both sticks of memory and the old hardrive, it is time to try the new disk drive. Disconnect the old hardrive. Ensure the new hardrive is set to MASTER with the jumpers on the back. Install the new hardrive and start the computer. Enter Bios to ensure the new hardrive has been recognized, showing the correct amount of RAM, etc., If not, try to get the disk drive to be recognized. You have other problems if it does not get recognized. Recheck all connections. Retry!!Assuming the drive is recognized, do you have WinXP on it or not? If so, let it boot to windows and let it cook, try to cause crashes. It may crash just because WinXP wasn't completely installed.If you don't have Windows on the drive or it is unstable, have you partitioned and formatted each partition? If not, get the Win98 boot disk, or WinXP CD and perform the partitioning (fdisk) and formatting.Reinstall WinXP. If it is stable and your copy of WinXP is NOT SP1, install SP1 (I recommend you download the 138+ SP1 file or purchase the CD from Microsoft for $10 or your buddy/local computer store may loan you a copy on CD) and any pre-SP2 updates from the Microsoft update website. You will also have to install the device drivers for your controller chips, i.e., VIA, Intel, SiS, AMD, ALi, etc., sound, graphics adapter, NICs, modems, other peripherals. Once you have all those loaded then do some cookin to see if your computer is stable.Act I, Scene 3Assuming your computer is now stable, you have some choices about the old hardrive. Leave it out, install it as a master on the secondary ide, install it as a slave (change the jumper) on the primary ide, reformat! Come to that bridge when you come to it!!!I would recommend installing as a slave, test to see if the computer is stable. If so, copy the important stuff to the other drive, then reformat the drive and use for not so important stuff that could be lost if the drive takes a dive.Fini (for now, let us know how you faired)

All of that activity inside the box may have caused some static electricity discharge in the vicinity of the memory, if precautions were not taken (grounded wrist strap, or the like). Do you have some boot-up option that will do the "long" bootup with complete memory test? That is where I would look first. Even before checking out the hard drive issue.Art.

Fini,Thank you very much for having a go at my problem. I will try to reinstall Windows XP on the new hard drive with all of the original RAM back in its place. I like the idea of going on a witch hunt and testing system stability. Execellent sugestion! I really didn't try to play around with windows very much after my second install with out the new RAM. I will definatly keep you posted with what happens....take out the smallest RAM stick and leave the largest since more memory is usually better (unless you are up on charges then "I don't recall" is a good answer...) - Nice, I tend to agree ;-)Thank you very much!-C.J. Starr

Hi Art,Didn't even think about this posibility. I know that static electricty can wreak havoc on computer components. I will have to look into the "long" boot up in my BIOS. Offhand I don't remember seeing an option like this in the settings, but I really never tried to look for something like this.Thanks! :-)-C.J. Starr

Hi Guys,I have just successfully installed Windows XP and am typing this on my computer right now. So far so good, the errors that were happening before during the installation are not happening anymore. I don't think that I am out of the woods yet, but I still have to install the SP1 over from Microsoft. I have a cable modem and I think I am just going to install the whole 138 MB file as suggested. I think I am not going to bother with the new memory and just take it back. My comptuter seems to be running along happily without it. I will keep you guys posted!Take care,-C.J. Starr

Good show!! After you download the SP1 - 138MB+, burn it to CD so you can have it for the future!