PC Died Right In Front Of Me

niceguyrichy

On my fiancee's pc all morning surfing the net.
Shut down IE about to switch off then remembered I had an email to answer, so double clicked IE.
It froze up before it opened, and after waiting a few minutes I restarted.
I get as far as the 'WindowsXP' blue screen (with the scrolling bar underneath), then it beeps and restarts.
Tried to boot in safe mode, but it just stops and does nothing almost as soon as it started.
To further my woe's, I've just moved and haven't yet found my Win XP disc.

Anyone any idea what in the hell might have happened??

To answer a few Q's before they're asked I run AVG and ZoneAlarm, both completely up to date, and my router has it's own inbuilt firewall too.

It's a 2.4 Celeron with 512 Ram running Win XP Pro Service Pack 2.

And I haven't added any hardware or software to it in like a month or two.

quakerjtf

I think it's a sign telling you to get a new computer that doesn't use a celeron. If you want something cheap try a Sempron 64.

swimtech

Got a boot CD of any kind (the ultimate boot disk would be ideal...)? Gets the Windows and the hard drive out of the way (if the CD drive is on a separate ide channel). If it boots and holds, try booting off the hard drive again and look for the problem to return...

niceguyrichy

No boot disc I'm affraid. I'll see if the missus can borrow one from someone at work, failing that I'm gonna slave it to my own computer, take everything off and wipe it clean.
Fed up of this kinda thing happening.
I blame shitty awfull microsoft windows for it.
XP is leakier than a damn tea strainer.

quakerjtf

Windows is decent, but don't use IE, big mistake. Use a 3rd party browser to avoid getting IE exploit crap.

niceguyrichy

Yeah I know.

I use Firefox on my own machine.
Just laziness on my part that I hadn't properly sorted out the other one.

shadowfield

1. Last Known Good Configuration
2. Recovery console
3. Repair install
4. fresh install

Dont blame XP. Ive been running the same install of XP since SP2 came out and ive never had an ounce of trouble with it. It seems to me people just use windows as a scapegoat, but what do i know? I also use IE, and once again, no virii or spyware.

niceguyrichy

Yeah, I'd do a repair install without even thinking about it if I could find my freakin XP disc.

And after lots of reading about this it seems that it may well be a memory and/or HDD problem. Doesn't stop Windows being a pain in the ass though.

Anyway, what are you Bill Gates nephew or something?

shadowfield

lol, i wish i was related to bill gates But really, even though windows can be to blame for problems some of the times, i think that alot of people jump on the "blame microsoft" wagon prematurely before blaming themselfs or other software/hardware problems.

niceguyrichy

Well I spent a few hours this afternoon raking through the plethora of boxes full of crap in the house and finally found my XP disc.
Repair install worked perfectly, and I'm currently testing the mem and hdd.

I would still like to know what caused the problem in the first place though.

Necrosis

Why not download the Debian Mepis boot CD distro. You can burn any important stuff with it. If it works well, and she likes it you can install it on the computer. If someone doesn't do gaming or requires a specific app that only runs in windows I see no point in using it.

niceguyrichy

She plays Diable II (?) and Age Of Mythology whenever she has the chance, but she can do that on one of the kids computers.
Only problem is that she needs to run SPSS for work, and our laptop is on the blink. It won't stay on for more than a minute and a half.

I'll definately give it some thought, thanks for the advice.

You do tend to get tunnel vision in regards to windows.
You forget that there are actually alternatives.