Hello All,

I am new to this forum - found it by Googling for help with several errors I've been experiencing. Here's the scoop:

My PC is several years old and was running WinXP Pro with SP2 applied. Everything was fine, until it started crashing intermittently. I had added several PCI devices to the system, it was old, and after removing devices and still having problems, I decided to completely upgrade the motherboard, processor, and power supply to attempt to improve system performance. After backing up all data, I replaced the MoBo, CPU, and power supply. I even formatted my primary drive and installed WinXP Pro on a clean, new partition.

I must note that my WinXP Pro CD is also dated, pre-SP1. So I know I will have to apply all kinds of updates (I've had to do it before when I re-installed a previous time). But with a cleanly formatted drive, and a freshly installed instance of Windows, I can't understand how I'm getting so many terrible errors.

1. After formatting the drive from the Win CD and installing Windows on the single new partition, the system restarted as it said it would. But during that very first restart, before the desktop could load, it jumped to a blue screen with the message: A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. The video driver failed to initialize. Technical Information: ***STOP: 0x000000B4 (0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00050000)

2. On the first restart after this error message, I attempted to boot from CD (wasn't sure what was wrong and thought I'd try re-formatting and re-installing again in case something went wrong during install). The CD got to "Reading Keyboard Layout" and the system shut down spontaneously with no error.

3. I waited a couple of days, then restarted the system and let it run without booting from CD. It went into Continuing Installation, and seemed to be fine. I verified the location settings, entered my name and organization, and it started installing devices. But it froze completely on Installing Network and wouldn't budge (left it running for an hour with no change).

4. Figuring something really had gone wrong with the installation, I rebooted, started from CD and re-formatted and re-installed Windows (again).

5. See 1 and 2 above.

6. This time, I Googled the "0x000000B4" error code and got a result implicating the Parallel Port I/O Address on Win2000 machines and a possible conflict with the video card. To troubleshoot, I went into the BIOS and simply disabled the Parallel port to see if I could boot with no errors.

7. With the Parallel Port disabled, I got the following blue-screen error during bootup prior to the desktop loading: Run the driver verifier against any new (or suspect) drivers. If that doesn't reveal the corrupting driver, try enabling special pool. Both of these . . . blah blah blah . . . where the offending driver can be identified. ***STOP: 0x000000C5 (0x00000004, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0x80536E14)

8. I Googled that error code, but the results at that point were starting to get a little too technical for me. I'm familiar with many levels of computing concepts, I'm comfortable making minor registry edits when needed, etc. But I don't write driver files, and I don't want to learn how to. Several results seemed to lean toward updating windows drivers via Windows Update, so I attempted a boot into safe mode with networking.

9. When booting to safe mode with networking, I get the following error message prior to the desktop loading: STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error} The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0x00000402 (0x00000000, 0x00000000) The system has been shut down

And that's where I am now. How can there be so many errors on a freshly installed copy of Windows? The drive has been formatted, so there are no driver files except the ones loaded by Windows itself. Shouldn't the drivers loaded by the CD work? They did before all this started happening.

Any help would be vastly appreciated. If I need to supply any more information, please let me know. As I said, I am knowledgeable of programming and troubleshooting concepts, but this is way beyond my range of experience.

I will be checking back periodically throughout the day for replies, as I would like to get that system back up asap. I feel like there is something very fundamental that I'm just overlooking.

Thanks in advance,

supercomplex

1. Don't discount the possibility that one of the new components you purchased is faulty.

2. You just performed major surgery on the computer; open it back up and inspect everything very closely. Look for mis-seated cards, connectors, and components. Check all connectors for bent/broken pins. Make sure none of the motherboard screws are bridging a circuit trace to the chassis (ground).

3. Check your RAM modules (one at a time) with the free memtest86 utility.

Actually for this error mess you should have booted to safe mode and reinstalled the video driver and restart in normal mode would have resolved...But since you have a