Hi willmay

I have ran into similar problems with a few computers and everyone of them had a bad RAM module. since you have 512MB of RAM, check to see if its one stick of 512MB or two sticks of...

the MBR could be corrupt. If you have the windows xp cd boot to it and go into the recovery console, i think you might need to enter your password if you have one set for windows logon if you dont...

I came across a problem like this a while back and it turned out to be bad RAM causing the problem.

I agree with Sarge the Poet, but don't use just any vacuum cleaner. I recommend to start with a can of air and blow out the computer and check to see if the heat sink over the CPU is full of dirt, if...

if it was just a problem with the driver there would be an exclamation point next to the device in question. the question mark indicates that the device does not have a driver installed for it.

those yellow question marks mean the drivers for that particular piece of hardware is not installed, so you need to know what PCI devices you have installed and you need to know what type of...

well then it just may be that xp is incompatible with your laptop I dont know what else to do to get xp installed

it's starting to sound like you might have a hardware problem. if you have another boot cd (just anything to try and boot the computer with to prove the cd drive is working properly try it) also go...

ok how did you do it. and what happened. are you getting errors?

when you install windows xp and setup takes over, just let it go. after the first reboot dont touch anything it will continue on its own. it will let you know when to click or type anything when its...

contact IBM and see if you can get a copy of windows from them, if you can use it to do a repair install. I'm not sure if the Dell CD will work in this case, but if all is lost and you have to...

it sounds like you might have wiped the drive and in doing so erased windows. you need to get a cd and reinstall windows.

the first thing you need to do is to find out if it's the monitor or the computer thats at fault. If you can swap the monitor with a known good monitor, or connect the monitor in question to a...

(thanks for the reply Liana.)

the desktop.ini files and probably the other files you see that seem strange are hidden files. open my computer click on tools>folder options>view

then scroll...

I didn't mean for it to sound like if it was invalid or not helpful. I know it is. but wouldn't you want to investigate a little first. like checking msconfig and disabling unneeded programs at...

cannot find NTLDR just means that your computer is looking on the hard drive to boot windows. go into your BIOS and check the boot priority make sure the cd drive is first. and try again


...

well if I looked up the right computer, you can only have a max of 512MB on the computer. so put the original RAM back in and see if it boots now, if it does exchange the 1GB RAM for 512MB

no I dont know. I would imagine that sp3 would work. it wouldnt hurt to to try anyway.

I did some searching on your problem, do you know if the install cd has any service packs on it. so basically is it just xp home or xp home sp1, xp home sp2.

if it's just xp home you might need...

isn't this a little evasive for a computer that just might need to delete some files.
so how exactly do you repair xp with the xp cd anyway. Please don't just say the recovery console, please...

you will lose you files unless you back them up then you will have to reinstall any program you have on your computer. have you tried to defrag your computer clean the prefetch and temp floders,...

even though BIOS can see the hard drive it's possible that the hard drive has some type of problem. If you want to attempt this yourself the first thing I would recommend would be to try a different...

thats good you made some progress. post back if you still have problems.

can you post the exact error message that you get? also you can download the ultimate boot CD and burn it to a CD then boot the computer with it. this CD will allow you to test the CPU, memory, and...

I had a similar problem recently with a customer's computer, and even though memtest passed the memory, it was still the memory that was at fault.

here's a couple of sugestions:

install the problem drive into a different computer and try to install the OS. If it installs that proves the drive is good and the problem computer should be...

no problem glad I could help

Hey Valuum, it is possible to turn off that warning through the windows security center. just go to control panel and click on security center and then click on recommendations for the firewall and...

ok I solved it. it turned out to be bad RAM

A customer brings me a computer telling me that it had a virus and a family member cleaned it for them and now the computer won't boot.

When I turned the computer on it said Ntldr missing

ok...

well the other cd's mentioned above will definitely work I use the one that I posted almost on a daily basis when a customer brings a computer to me and I forget to get their password its very easy...

I was trying to edit my original post but for some reason it didnt work anyway in regard to leaving the admin password blank there maybe an admin password that your company used when they installed...

you can hit ctrl+alt+del twice and this should bring you to a log on box type Administrator for the user name and leave the password blank

if this does not work then download this cd ...

hey it just hit me you dont need to boot from the 98 cd to upgrade to xp just insert the xp cd and install.

so If I were you I would try all over check add remove programs to see if you can...

it could just be a configuration problem if you double click on the device in device manager and research the error code you might find the the fix, but sometimes it just happens that way one day...

you should also consider converting the file system to NTFS instead of FAT

ok, well anyway an exclamation point indicates the device is in a problem state.

there is a chance that there could be somthing wrong with your intigrated sound and you might need a new sound...

ok well the problem might be that you used a 98 cd to format the drive. boot from the windows xp cd then delete the current install and then format the drive with NTFS and then install

ok earlier you posted that your windows was sp3 did you update it to sp3 or is it a disk that has sp3 on it

when you installed them did the the
question mark in device manager go away
if it did and you still dont have sound then downlaod the codec pack that I posted earlier

did you try the one that I...