Windows XP blue screen, bootfile corruption

pontovic

Hi

I recently was landed with a Dell Laptop (Inspiron 2200) which I was asked to fix for someone. What was happening was when the person tried to turn it on, it would complain that various files needed for bootup were missing. This happened most of the time. I was actually able to boot into it some of the time. Here is a list of the problems I encountered.

-- When booting, the prompt screen telling you windows had not started normally would come up, giving you the option to boot in safe mode, safe mode with networking support, normally etc. Chosing any of these would give rise to the following bullet point.

-- It would complain that various files needed for windows to load were missing ( I can't remember exactly what the names were, not NTLDR ). It would prompt me to insert the windows XP install media and try to do a 'repair'.

-- When I could boot into the laptop, it was generally quite unresponsive but I could work with it. I uninstalled the McAfee antivirus already there and I installed AVG antivirus. A full update and a scan revealed no virus.

-- When copying a large number of files over the wireless network I have in my home to my other computer to backup the stuff there, I revealed my first blue screen of death when the file transfer was about 80% complete. I forget the exact message on it but I was taken back to the boot menu to choose safe mode, normal mode etc. Still the same trouble getting back into windows as before but I got there eventually. I switched the thing off and came back to it later.

Once I had backed up everything from this person's laptop, I re-installed windows XP home SP1 and installed all the latest drivers got the latest updates from windowsupdate.com. I downloaded the latest drivers from dell and installed AVG antivirus. All looked good.

I started to install the basic needed apps, like firefox and openoffice. Here is where things get bad. I downloaded and installed OpenOffice.org, and once the installation had completed, I see that blue screen again and then back to square one with that safe mode prompt menu.

I have a feeling this has something to do with defective RAM. I'm not 100% sure, though, and I would like to ask a few questions and give you all the spec of the machine.

Its a Dell Inspiron 2200 that comes from the US. Its about a year old at this stage.
Pentium M 1.6Ghz CPU,
256mb DDR-sdram
Windows XP home edition, the install CD is WinXP Home SP-1
40gb HDD

-- Would I be right in assuming it may be defective memory ? The blue screen showed itself whenever a task that may require alot of memory was carried out, ie installing OpenOffice, transgerring alot of files over a wireless network.

-- What could be causing the boot files windows needs to load up to be corrupted ?

-- I would like to do a test on the memory to see if it is efective. Can anyone here reccommend any good programs I can use to test it ?

-- Anyone here have any ideas what else could be the cause of these problems ?

Thanks in advance.

8T8

Use Memtest+ to check for bad RAM let it run for an hour or two to see if it finds something.

timeout

Also it could be a faulty HD. Dell's driver disk is usually a Drivers and Diagnostics disk. The Diagnostics part is actually pretty good at detecting most problems. Also you could try the ultimate Boot cd.link Has a number of tools including HD and memory diagnostics.

pontovic

I forgot to tell you all I don't have a copy of any of the original installation or support disks, just the laptop on its own. I used a copy of windows XP SP1 I had from another dell computer.

Thanks for the replies anyway. Ill see can I get the dell diagnostics and burn it all onto a blank cd.