Physical memory dump - boot disk failure - help!!

Hintza

Sorry meant to say USB hub

tcall

Ahh right... Done the trouble shoot now. No joy.
The computer is not left on, and this happens half the time when booting.
The closest I can find on the net seems to be this problem http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=3114

so maybe my cable or hdd.

Can I unistall the driver for my hdd? Not sure if it will reinstall itself on reboot or not...

tcall

Sorry meant to say USB hub

nope, not that

robnye

Ahh right... Done the trouble shoot now. No joy.
The computer is not left on, and this happens half the time when booting.
The closest I can find on the net seems to be this problem http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=3114

so maybe my cable or hdd.

Can I unistall the driver for my hdd? Not sure if it will reinstall itself on reboot or not...

if you havent installed any hardware recently or removed the cable from the hard drive, then I dont think it will be that.

you could try reinstalling Win xp over the top of the current install, maybe a driver has got corrupted.

tcall

Well, after not being able to boot up for 3 days now (on work computer at the moment), it looks like the only thing left to do is try reinstalling windows, which will mean the loss of all my data

robnye

Well, after not being able to boot up for 3 days now (on work computer at the moment), it looks like the only thing left to do is try reinstalling windows, which will mean the loss of all my data  :'(

if you reinstall windows into the same directory as before, you wont lose any data nor program settings.

in fact you will only lose your data if you reformat your hard disk.

tcall

Thanks. I shall give it a go and report the results!

tcall

Well, an update...
The PC is now well and truely buggered.
Wouldn't detect HD when I tried to reinstall windows. I tried another HD too and it got halfway through installing, then tries to reboot in order to complete installation. As it boots up it detects the new drive but then flashes up invalid "boot.ini file", and tries to boot again.... And basically just repeats this over and over.

Now am trying desperately to get one of the Dell bargains, but selected the wrong mouse for their configuration, and am not too hopeful of it going through >:(

boofy_2

Just thought I'd put my tuppence worth in. This has happened to be a couple of times recently. If you wait a few seconds the computer will restart in due course. If not, I phoned one of the technical helplines (£1 or £1.50 a minute mind you but worth it if it works) . A number I use is 09062 517 517. Or you can try the magazine "Web Active" helpline on 0906 906 0521. Just a thought!

CityHunter_3

As you've tried another HDD and it's happening to that I would suggest using a different EIDE cable. As data could be getting corrupted through that.