Can't get Vista or XP cd to boot

[scottbanger]

A friend brought me a laptop with an unknown history. Its Intel Celeron Vista Basic... beyond that I dont know what's in the machine. When I try to turn it on it goes from the TOSHIBA screen where I can boot to an error message relating to winload.exe status 0xc00000e9 I/O error. I insert my vista repair disc, boot to cd, I get the green/yellow scrolling bar at the bottom, then the same black screen. I get the same result with a Vista install disc. I've used the repair and install discs before, so they work. I tried an XP disc, and it starts loading, I get the blue setup screen, it loads all the files, then goes to "setup is starting windows" then I get a blue screen of death, stop: 0x0000007b. For fun, I tried to install Mac osx for x86. When it asks me where to install Leopard, there are no options available. Is this a hardware issue?

[caperjack]

do you have a linux live cd to try ,if it works it would ruel out hardware for the most part ,but it runs from the cd and ram ,so it sould be a bad harddrive .

ubuntu linux ,burn it to disk ,and when booting to the disk you will get option to install or run from disk to try it without installing to hdd .
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

[caperjack]

also you could try checking the ram with memtest86 bootcd
http://www.memtest86.com/

[scottbanger]

I installed Ubertu to a USB drive... It boots to the screen where you choose what to do. If I try to change options in the menu, it freezes up. If I let it count down, it will go to "Loading /casper/initrd.lz...ready." then a flashing curser, and it sits.

[mah300274]

Try to reset the ram, take it out and put it back in. I have never worked with a vista repair disk, I only have been using windows 7, but it is probably the same if not close. If you can try to take out the hard drive carefully and take it to another computer and format it. The OSX might not work if there was not a partion devoted to it. Then try to redo the install with vista install disks. If you can try to download / reburn the restore disks at a vry slow speed, x2. (even at x2 speed the burner can fail to burn every byte of info correctly several times.

[scottbanger]

I got my hands on a usb bootable version of xp... ran some tests on the c:\ drive, many came back with communication errors. Formatted the drive to 23 million errors. Went and bought a new sata drive today, working great now. Thanks for your help everyone.

[bobbyraw]

any time you try to boot or install and your PC freezes, it's always point to the HDD.

[bobbyg23]

I have seen this beforer when the memory sticks were loose, check them.

[bobbyraw]

you should mark this as solved