If your computer doesn't find a working boot record on the harddisk or elsewhere, it asks you to insert a diskette with a bootable system. This means your operating system can't be found for one of...

You should check now if your HDD is an IDE (40-pin connector) or S-ATA type (lesser pins, looks like this photo: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/04/07/going_the_sas_storage_way/page3.html). If...

Have you tried this?
http://www.help2go.com/Tutorials/Windows/C:%5Cwindows%5Csystem32%5Cconfig%5Csystem_missing_or_corrupt.html

You're welcome. :) Unfortunately, I'm a bit at my wits' end. I wish I could have a RL look at that machine. One more thing that may affect the outcome of an installation attempt: The right order of...

Just wait with the hammer, I believe you're a patient guy anyway ;)
We're not all done yet:

Are all duplicates in device manager gone now?

If the drivers seem to be installed correctly (?)...

Ok, thanks for the info. This way I can check if there are specific issues with that hardware. Nothing specific found. Your MoBo has an ALC650 soundchip and that one seems to be a bit picky. But...

We're all on your side, TinglyCourier ! :)

I learned from your introduction that you are experienced with those things and you might know more about that stuff than me - I hope you don't mind if...

Ok, I have no clue, but a whole bunch of standard questions in my editor for you to chew on while your other computer is occupied :cheesy: . But first another one:
I found quite some users...

I assume you tried to activate the volume control for the system tray in taskbar and got that message? This is a pretty common problem then. In some cases, the Sndvol32.exe application (the mixer)...

My recommendation is to try the free VideoLanClient, available at
http://www.videolan.org/

VLC plays virtually every media format that creeps around on almost every computer and it's faster and...

Please read this thread:
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread28329.html
You'll find some suggestions there.