I had a computer that did this way back (win95). Never got to the bottom of it. New ram, new PSU. Nothing. Was definately a hardware issue though, as it did it under other OSes too.

There is usually a system recovery partition, accessible using a keyboard shortcut (f11 on boot usually). Consult the user manual for your computer.

Look here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953356

Yep, agreed. I just wanted to see how things panned out .thread locked.

Indeed. Remove the affected stick and see if the error occurs again.

Type the number (The one which is like 0x-something) into the sarch box on the microsoft site as well as the text next to it (e.g BAD_POOL_HEADER)

Either a bad driver or overheating is my guess. Could also be defective RAM.

Ask your brother for it. Thats a BIOS (power on) password.

I think its just a vista bug

I have an IBM laptop and sometimes the wireless light goes out for absolutely no reason. And if i diagnose the error it says "wireless is turned off". No shit!

its not all its cracked up to be. Indeed, its fairly flimsy, if you push with one finger on the top of the lid hard enough, you can crack the screen...

Get a USB keyboard. (a cheap one is under $10) It should work with a laptop.

Use another keyboard which works?

Well fitstly let it dry (for at least a week in a warm place) then assess the damage. Its likely to be a total loss due to water damage (if it gets into the caps on the motherboard it swells them),...

Is your BIOS battery dead? (its the silver watch-type battery on the motherboard)

What it would achieve, is the solution!

We deduced that as the XP disk, nor the ram or hard disk was at fault, then the optical drive must be causing read errors

thaught so. Seems (upon further inventigation) that some models use the slim drives and some dont.

Oh right do you have the vertical model?

The GX280 comes in SMT (tower) and SD (desktop horizontal) types.

http://www.dell.com/html/us/products/optiplex/GX280sd_3d_model.html

We used to have...

Bad cd drive is most likely

Those machines use laptop drives, and they tend to wear out very quickly.

Overheat? The CPU does have thermal paste, heatsink and fan right?

you would need a huge ass magnet.

Large magnets (such as magnets out of a large speaker) are said to have minimal effect on the drive.

yeah but it will probably permanently destroy it

use fdisk / mbr from MSDOS and it should help. Will remove the bootloader and allow you to repartition and reformat. Will possibly lead to total...

yeah i thaught so

stock paste is never any good

for decent CPUs you need your own (preferably as5 or something)

if reapplying the paste and reseating doesnt work its probably a duff motherboard or cpu.

remove the old stuff with alcohol and apply again as i instructed,

if it doesnt work try RMAing the motherboard.

how have you got the thermal paste applied?

you know less is more, right?

a little more than a pea sized amount, spread in an even thinnish layer.

Its a simple repair for a desktop, but the laptop is trickier. The CMOS battery is a silver button cell, medium size , maybe like you would find in a watch.

The thing to remember is, get the right...

bad memory?

if it is tied to a failed resumei think there is a way to force the OS to clean boot - try holding shift or space i think

a) he CANT disable the onboard audio in the BIOS as its been customised for the OEM (same on my dell)

b) this thread is from 2005

Swap the power supply anyway. After an electrical fault its always good to do it as it could fail and toast everything. Better safe than sorry.

"power supply seems to have gone haywire it starts...

the battery ma be dead, is it old?

yep sounds like the card overheated and permanently damaged it.

I got wierd yellow squares when i overclocked and overheated my card lol

Sounds like an overheat?

How many times, describe them
No display at all?

yeah new laptop time

Set PlugNPlay OS to YES
Also, if there is an option in the BIOS for MBR/Bootsector Virus protection, please turn it OFF
Choose Exit + Save Settings

Try reinstalling XP again, should stop the HAL...

Go into your BIOS settings . Is there options for things like "ACPI OS, APM OS, Plug 'n' play OS?"

I dont know, but its worth trying a new one anyway, you should expect to pay $2-$6

replace the BIOS battery, they are cheap

If its been unused for some time it will die, which means it will lose all config information, which coukd be why it hangs.

Try removing all non-essential hardware and peripherals (basically everything apart from cpu,ram,a video card if needed, and adisplay) and then boot. See if it works

Remove the BIOS battery (round, looks like a watch one) for a half an hour and stick it back in (make sure its the right way around). It should reset the BIOS to the factory settings which should...