PC Boots to OS then dies

[cantthinkof1]

Hi all,

I have a PC here its an unbranded one but specs are: MOBO is K7S5a 512Mb ram AMD Duron processor 750 Mhz. Its an oldie and was working untill I took it from my parents last night.

Switched it on today, BIOS loads fine (AMIBIOS) finds hdd & 2 cd drives.
When it starts to load windows I got a blue screen so I rebooted and it now wont load windows (XPsp3)
Tried a "last known good configuration" but the screen goes blank & nothing.
Tried a Safe Boot and it does start to load files but after loading the following files it hangs

\system32\
ntoskrnl.exe
hal.dll
kdcom.dll
bootvid.dll
\system32\config\system
c_1252.nls
c_437.nls
l_intl.nls
\fonts\vgaoem.fon
\apppatch\drvmain.sdb

I have tried a booting from a windowsXP disk that I have but it starts to load files and just stops
I tried loading a Win7 disk I have but it to starts loading files when the white progress bar gets to the top it just stops.

Any ideas.

Now just to complicate things, I took the heatsinc of processor to clean it & the fan (fairly manky) while trying to unclip the hs from the proc the screwdriver slipped (twice) I cant see any damage but have I borked the mobo?

Regards
Sheepish

I ran Hirens Boot CD. It wont boot into miniXp. When I tried to run just the Hirens Cd it ran into problems and failed to decompress the ramdisk
Error details:
Ramdisk at 0x1feea00, lenght 0x000f57e1
Moving compressed data from 0x1feea00 to 0x1fd92800
gzip image: decompressed addr 0x1fe88000, len 0x00168000: fialed
Decompression error: invalid comprsssed format (err=2)

[Fortune117]

Tried a memtest?

Sounds to me like a RAM or HD failiure.

[cantthinkof1]

Tried a memtest?

Sounds to me like a RAM or HD failiure.

Tried that, then removed on of the ram chips. Started to boot into windows and I thought I had solved it. Got to the windows splash screen then it hung. Hit reset and now the pc seems to be booting but not getting any video image. Not even the bios post info.
switched ram chips, put the 2 back in but still no image. Checked card is secure, checked cables.

Must have killed it
Thanks

[Flash477]

Sounds like a typical transport problem (i.e. something has come loose during transport). Try re-seating the ram and any cards

[Fortune117]

Do you have onboard graphics availiable? if so try using that so we can isolate the problem.

[mufa]

happened with a friend once.. but his safemodw with networking worked ok.. so used that .. then called for repairs.. turned out to be a viral infection .. ...
so i guess you might wanna unplug the HDD and connect it to someones PC who has a proper antivirus software installed.. and then scan it and try again..

[cantthinkof1]

Do you have onboard graphics availiable? if so try using that so we can isolate the problem.

No theres no onboard graphics. I had thought of that already. The Gods are against me on this one.