Rebuilt Saturday, died Wednesday, can't reinstall XP

Hello all.

I built my machine in 1998 and have been upgrading bits and pieces
ever since. As of last March I had and ASUS kt7 motherboard (can't
remember exact model), a duron 950 mhz processor, 128mb ram, and a
4-gig hard drive (don't laugh). In March I formatted the hard drive
and did a full install of XP Home (OEM). Everything worked
beautifully until a few weeks ago when my hard drive got too full.

This past Saturday I put in a new 120gig WD hard drive, an additional
128mb of ram (exact model I already had), and a network card. I
installed the same OEM XP Home with no problem, then tons of
additional software and I was a happy camper until Tuesday.

Tuesday night my Palm suffered a fatal exception during a sync. I
should have known something was wrong then. By Wednesday afternoon
the PC started running painfully slowly and finally got to the point
where I couldn't reboot at all (each time it would get less far until
I was finally only getting a blue screen). I decided to cut my losses
and reinstall XP (had a power interuption downloading service packs on
Saturday and thought maybe that was related).

I put in the CD, got into the process, and got a message that a file
was corrupted and setup couldn't continue. I cleaned the CD and tried
again. Got past that point, past the formatting, then a file couldn't
be copied about 50% into the file copy process. Asked me if I wanted
to skip or exit setup. I stopped, cleaned the CD again, blew out the
CD drive with canned air and started the install. This time I got
about 75% through copying files when a different file couldn't be
copied. I have repeated this process 2 or 3 more times and gotten to
this same point.

I have tried making sure the new hardware is in properly, cables
firmly connected, etc. but still no luck. I even used the disk that
came with the hard drive to re-partition and reformat (ntfs) before
trying to install and still can't get any further than 75% through the
file copy. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Annie

I've seen this exact same scenario several times, and each time the RAM was
the culprit :-)

"AnnieK" wrote in message
m...
Hello all.

I built my machine in 1998 and have been upgrading bits and pieces
ever since. As of last March I had and ASUS kt7 motherboard (can't
remember exact model), a duron 950 mhz processor, 128mb ram, and a
4-gig hard drive (don't laugh). In March I formatted the hard drive
and did a full install of XP Home (OEM). Everything worked
beautifully until a few weeks ago when my hard drive got too full.

This past Saturday I put in a new 120gig WD hard drive, an additional
128mb of ram (exact model I already had), and a network card. I
installed the same OEM XP Home with no problem, then tons of
additional software and I was a happy camper until Tuesday.

Tuesday night my Palm suffered a fatal exception during a sync. I
should have known something was wrong then. By Wednesday afternoon
the PC started running painfully slowly and finally got to the point
where I couldn't reboot at all (each time it would get less far until
I was finally only getting a blue screen). I decided to cut my losses
and reinstall XP (had a power interuption downloading service packs on
Saturday and thought maybe that was related).

I put in the CD, got into the process, and got a message that a file
was corrupted and setup couldn't continue. I cleaned the CD and tried
again. Got past that point, past the formatting, then a file couldn't
be copied about 50% into the file copy process. Asked me if I wanted
to skip or exit setup. I stopped, cleaned the CD again, blew out the
CD drive with canned air and started the install. This time I got
about 75% through copying files when a different file couldn't be
copied. I have repeated this process 2 or 3 more times and gotten to
this same point.

I have tried making sure the new hardware is in properly, cables
firmly connected, etc. but still no luck. I even used the disk that
came with the hard drive to re-partition and reformat (ntfs) before
trying to install and still can't get any further than 75% through the
file copy. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Annie

Thanks John! I'll swap it out tonight and see what happens.

"John E. Carty" wrote in message ...
I've seen this exact same scenario several times, and each time the RAM was
the culprit :-)

"AnnieK" wrote in message
m...
Hello all.

I built my machine in 1998 and have been upgrading bits and pieces
ever since. As of last March I had and ASUS kt7 motherboard (can't
remember exact model), a duron 950 mhz processor, 128mb ram, and a
4-gig hard drive (don't laugh). In March I formatted the hard drive
and did a full install of XP Home (OEM). Everything worked
beautifully until a few weeks ago when my hard drive got too full.

This past Saturday I put in a new 120gig WD hard drive, an additional
128mb of ram (exact model I already had), and a network card. I
installed the same OEM XP Home with no problem, then tons of
additional software and I was a happy camper until Tuesday.

Tuesday night my Palm suffered a fatal exception during a sync. I
should have known something was wrong then. By Wednesday afternoon
the PC started running painfully slowly and finally got to the point
where I couldn't reboot at all (each time it would get less far until
I was finally only getting a blue screen). I decided to cut my losses
and reinstall XP (had a power interuption downloading service packs on
Saturday and thought maybe that was related).

I put in the CD, got into the process, and got a message that a file
was corrupted and setup couldn't continue. I cleaned the CD and tried
again. Got past that point, past the formatting, then a file couldn't
be copied about 50% into the file copy process. Asked me if I wanted
to skip or exit setup. I stopped, cleaned the CD again, blew out the
CD drive with canned air and started the install. This time I got
about 75% through copying files when a different file couldn't be
copied. I have repeated this process 2 or 3 more times and gotten to
this same point.

I have tried making sure the new hardware is in properly, cables
firmly connected, etc. but still no luck. I even used the disk that
came with the hard drive to re-partition and reformat (ntfs) before
trying to install and still can't get any further than 75% through the
file copy. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Annie

You're quite welcome. Keep us posted on the outcome :-)

"AnnieK" wrote in message
om...
Thanks John! I'll swap it out tonight and see what happens.

"John E. Carty" wrote in message
...
I've seen this exact same scenario several times, and each time the RAM
was
the culprit :-)

"AnnieK" wrote in message
m...
Hello all.

I built my machine in 1998 and have been upgrading bits and pieces
ever since. As of last March I had and ASUS kt7 motherboard (can't
remember exact model), a duron 950 mhz processor, 128mb ram, and a
4-gig hard drive (don't laugh). In March I formatted the hard drive
and did a full install of XP Home (OEM). Everything worked
beautifully until a few weeks ago when my hard drive got too full.

This past Saturday I put in a new 120gig WD hard drive, an additional
128mb of ram (exact model I already had), and a network card. I
installed the same OEM XP Home with no problem, then tons of
additional software and I was a happy camper until Tuesday.

Tuesday night my Palm suffered a fatal exception during a sync. I
should have known something was wrong then. By Wednesday afternoon
the PC started running painfully slowly and finally got to the point
where I couldn't reboot at all (each time it would get less far until
I was finally only getting a blue screen). I decided to cut my losses
and reinstall XP (had a power interuption downloading service packs on
Saturday and thought maybe that was related).

I put in the CD, got into the process, and got a message that a file
was corrupted and setup couldn't continue. I cleaned the CD and tried
again. Got past that point, past the formatting, then a file couldn't
be copied about 50% into the file copy process. Asked me if I wanted
to skip or exit setup. I stopped, cleaned the CD again, blew out the
CD drive with canned air and started the install. This time I got
about 75% through copying files when a different file couldn't be
copied. I have repeated this process 2 or 3 more times and gotten to
this same point.

I have tried making sure the new hardware is in properly, cables
firmly connected, etc. but still no luck. I even used the disk that
came with the hard drive to re-partition and reformat (ntfs) before
trying to install and still can't get any further than 75% through the
file copy. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Annie