Nearly out of options

[Capt BK]

Do you mind if I ask you knowledgable bunch for a bit of advice?

My old PC has been getting gradually worse over recent months, slowing, crashes etc, so I decided to wipe the hard drives and start from scratch. Problem is despite following the instructions from the winXP disk it came back barely working. I tried again but it got worse. Remembering my old 486 days I have now managed format both hard drives (eventually) using a boot disk but i'm still having problems? When the system starts all of the DOS text charachters are all mixed up and the screen is littered with exclamation marks!!!
If I try to type "format" for example I get "vnrmat" which obviously isn't recognised.

I've tried searching various anti-virus websites (the system did have a regulary updated program) and this forum but with not much luck. Anyone got any idea what the hell is going on? Over the next few days i'm going to try to flash my BIOS but it's about the last thing I can think of?

Unfortunatey as I drift rapidly away from my youthful years these damn things get more elusive to me (I said I would never say that!), bring back MS-DOS and Windows 3.1:hmm:

[Timothy]

I think that you should be able to delete and recreate the partition from BIOS,and then boot from the XP CD which will recognise that the disk is unformatted and start with an NTFS format.

Got to be worth a try.

If that doesn't work, get hold of FDSISK (from any old DOS or 3.1 floppy you have lying around and use that to completely zap the disk.

W

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Capt BK,

Could you give us the details on the hardware in your comp please. It would help us research any issues you are having.

When installing WinXP, you are better off doing the install with one HD and one Optical Drive. If you have more drives, it is better to leave them disconnected and add them in later. Same goes for USB Devices, except for Keyboard and Mouse.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. The jumbled Boot Screen would be a Vid Card that overheated. That would cause a lot of problems in your OS too.

[Capt BK]

Thanks guys,

I had a look in my BIOS and I cant find an option to format from there. I'm thinking along the same lines as you richard and gutting the system down to a minimum setup.

My main suspect is the video card because the jumbled screen affects everything, even the BIOS screen but what I don't understand is wouldn't that just affect the output display? Going back to the original "format" example I would understand if it displayed "vnrmat" but if the display is an output wouldn't the system still see "format"? Bloodly things:(

I should know better then ask a technical question without giving a spec:)

Pentium 4 1.7Ghz
Abit TH7II-RAID motherboard
GeForce 256 Annihilator pro graphics card
2 western digital hard drives (8 + 30GB)
LG CD-ROM
CR-RW (cant remember the manufacturer?)

Thanks for your help so far:D

CBK

P.S. I hope buisness is going well Richard. Was hoping to come across this year as well but no funds i'm afraid:*

[WideBodiedEng]

I have two CD drives (CD read only and a CD-R) and had trouble installing WinXP until I disconnected my CD-R drive then it went just fine!
Following a successful installation, I re-connected the drive and all is hunky-dory.

[Capt BK]

Right then, i'm down to a basic setup. No cards, 1 CD-ROM, 1 Hard drive.

While I was using an win98 system floppy the screen cleared unexpectedly and I managed to get some commands in. I re-partitioned the hard drive, formatted it and installed windows XP onto the blank hard drive. It worked Ok for a bit but when I turned it on the next day the problem had come back:( It worked on and off seemingly at random.

As a last measure I have downloaded the very latest video driver with still no luck. Nothing I do seems to get rid of the problem.

So now when I boot up the first DOS boot screens look all scrambled, covered with exclamation marks and when winXP gets going it either comes up Ok with a high res/colour screen, or with a low res/colour screen.

I'm just about convinced that it's the video card so i'm going to give it a week and buy a cheap video card and see what happens. Its just annoying that it works sometimes and not others:* If anyone thinks it could be something else please feel free to fire any suggestions, i might save me some money:D

Thanks for everyone's help with this, hopefully you won't hear from me again on this matter;)

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Capt BK,

A couple of years ago I had the same Video Card, the Annihilator Pro. I had several long talks with Creative, when my card failed. I did get Creative to admit that they had a lot of failures with their cooling solution for that card. They have been having the fans on the GPU fail. Without the fan, the GPU will overheat and actually sustain permanent damage. They were sending everyone that had the fan fail a GeForce2 MX as a direct replacement.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. We are keeping busy, I hope you will be able to visit again soon.