No Splash Screen, No Error Message, Fresh Install

[BrianAltenhofel]

I have a machine that has me stumped at the moment. It had quit booting into Windows XP Professional. At that time, it would just freeze on the splash screen. I backed up the files they needed saved to a USB drive using Debian-Live. I tried chkdsk, fixmbr, fixboot, and bootcfg to no avail. The Windows installation CD would not give me a repair option for this system.

So, I decided to wipe it, run a CPU test, MemTest86, and the HDD test for that drive. No errors were found at all. I then proceeded to do a fresh install of Windows XP.

Installation went smoothly, but I have the same problem again, except I don't even get to the splash screen. No error messages, and once again the CD doesn't recognize a previous installation being there in order to give me the repair option. I've tried removing the sound card and using an old ATI 3DRage PCI video card instead the onboard video, known working memory modules, and still have no results.

Now here's the real kicker: I put the hard drive in another machine, and it does the same thing. I take a hard drive with a working installation and put it in the problem machine, and it does the same thing.

I'm about ready to just tell my in-laws its time to buy the parts for me to build them a newer computer (its really only used for surfing and listening to music). This current one is six years old, I believe, and has lived all its life in very smokey conditions.

[snowmonkey]

Hard drive are not that expansive these days....so instead of getting a whole new machine, why don't you get a small drive and try the installation again?!


Cheers