XP load up failure

DirtyHarry

yep you guessed right.....setting up my new rig for the past week and installed XP during the middle of last week......it installed fine but i kept getting a system crash once in a while......

So tonight i did a fresh install.....(this is using a bought legit copy of XP Home) Bought from IT Direct about 1 and a half years ago.

I get to installing XP and it says "mfe49u.dll not copied correctly"

i press enter to retry and it gives me a blue error screen about a minute later. basically fu<ked........i restart the machine and then it tells me the "NTLDR" is missing. Press ctrl Alt Delete. so i do that and then XP loads up again and fails again......fu<king roller coaster here.....i need help on this one?

What could be wrong?

marco murphy

NTLDR,i got this from another PC in the system folder,then i told XP where the NTLDR was located...on a floppy..

DirtyHarry

doesnt ask for it on a floppy or anything...just keeps failing and gives me completely different flie codes and so on....im doing my 5th install here....just keeps fu<king up

optikus-prime

"I get to installing XP and it says "mfe49u.dll not copied correctly"

I have seen this before and it was due to bad ram, you should get memtest and make a boot floppy to see if you ram is good. memtest

DirtyHarry

this time i got "mfc40.dll" was not copied correctly

damn this....i cant believe its the memory....bollox to this

DirtyHarry

how the fu<k do you get memtest to work?

osmethod

It might be that your HD has some bad sectors....

Use a Win98 Boot Disk if you have one, Use Fdisk to clear the drive, create a FAT32 partition, reboot and format the drive with a full format.

This should show if there are any bad sectors...

Sorry for asking but is it after the first stage install this happens...?

osmethod

optikus-prime

I'm presuming you downloaded memtest32.zip for windows. If you did it should simply be a case of unzipping it, running install.bat, giving it a floppy disc and booting from that floppy disc

DirtyHarry

im putting it on a cd.....i have it burnt on cd but i cant get it to work on the start up screen? tells me that stupid NTLDR is missing.....reboot......and so on.

SouperComputer

hmmm, in BIOS make sure you disable all other boot options other than your CDROM

maybe before you do that though, maybe have a look at the memory settings in BIOS, they may be a bit to agrressive. You can be 80% sure its dodge RAM though

DirtyHarry

i put back the timings to a CL of 2.5...they were at 2...made no difference....7th reinstall and i get Setup cannot copy the file dvdplay.exe

god damn.........shall i take a stick of my parents ram (from a dell) and stick it in and see what happens?

would be only 256....need the other one to run the net here to post!

optikus-prime

why not just run memtest, it will tell you within a ~half hour if your ram is the problem. I can pm you the memtest86 for a floppy if you have a drive. Ihad the exact same issue you were experiencing and it was bad ram. You could try removing the ram one stick at a time to see if it clears the fault .I would almost guarantee it is bad ram.

Wertz

Yeah most likely RAM problmes. I had what I thought was a corrupt MBR a few months back and bought a new HDD to set up as a slave in order to retrieve my data. HWile installing xp i got random errors like the ones you describe and when I eventually got it to install and ran a RAM checker diagnostic, it turned out my 512mb stick was hosed.

DirtyHarry

ok got memtest to work.....its still doing the test but iv half the screen red....some long list of codes in red? its about 76% done and iv 10 codes in red?

what does that mean exactly? obviously bad?

Sherifu

DirtyHarry wrote:

.....setting up my new rig for the past week and installed XP during the middle of last week......it installed fine but i kept getting a system crash once in a while......

Exact same thing happened to me.
Remember I told ya I had to return my ram.
Hows the sale of rig parts going? Anything left?

DL windows memory test here.
Put onto floppy.
Set to boot from floppy and you should soon see if you've got
problems.

All the best,
rkm.

optikus-prime

It means you've bad ram, how many sticks of ram do you have and what capacity per stick?

DirtyHarry

iv two sticks of ram....512mb each....iv taken out one and one is in doing the test.

So when that is done ill test the other one. I couldnt have two bad sticks could i?

fecking test is going on for ages....21 minutes? such a small file and taking ages to complete.

optikus-prime

It should be the second stick, i.e. the one that's further away from your processor.

DirtyHarry

well iv one bad...thats for sure....hard to make out what going on during this test....second stick is now in....if this one is bad...ill kill someone.

DirtyHarry

errr WTF???? Test 5, 10448 errors??? this is on my sceond stick of 512mb??? this cant be possible that two sticks be fu<ked right?

optikus-prime

hard to make out what going on during this test..

What memtest does is it fills your memory with every possible sequence of 1s&0s and it will then determine what part of your memory is borked. It usually gives codes in hexadecimal and it is searching for bits stuck in your ram.

i.e. it writes ffff all 1's 1111111111111111
and it reads fffd 1111111111111101

in the above case it found 1 bit stuck low
i would say look up hex & binary on the internet, it will give you a greater understanding of why your ram is faulty.

optikus-prime

DirtyHarry wrote:

errr WTF???? Test 5, 10448 errors??? this is on my sceond stick of 512mb??? this cant be possible that two sticks be fu<ked right?

It could be also possible that you have a faulty processor/motherboard, put the ram in another computer if you have one and run memtest again if it passes you have a faulty processor/motherboard. if so it's RMA time

Wertz

2 sticks going bad at the one time sounds like a power surge or an ES discharge has cooked em. Be warned that most warranties are voided in that case...

SouperComputer

bang the 256 from the dell in, run memtest
bang the faulty 512s in the dell, one at a time, run memtest.

may point the finger in the mobo\controller or busted ram area.

DirtyHarry

ok i put one stick of 256 from my parents dell into my computer and loaded Xp...it worked prefect so far....*touch wood*

Xp is loaded and desktop hasnt crashed or anything.....from this iv concluded that the ram iv got doesnt seem to be compatible with my motherboard or the two sticks are fecked. But id say its more so that they are not compatible.

So what do i do now? Can i send back these two sticks of ram to Komplett? (i still have packaging) or what else? then find some ram that is copmpatible and use that?

Suggestions and advice needed folks! help given so far has helped a great deal and thanks a million! not finished yet tho!

Cheers

unkel

Let me guess, it was Twinmos ram

DirtyHarry wrote:

So what do i do now? Can i send back these two sticks of ram to Komplett? (i still have packaging)

Yes just request an RMA from Komplett

DirtyHarry

it was Corsair XMS Pro PC3200 CL2. Iv two sticks of 512 too.

Ill RMA them as some as possible. Im not sure if they are bad...memtest really didnt make a load of sense to me. Anyway anybody know some fast ram that would be compatible with my board?