Laptop won't load/repair/reinstall Win XP Home

[Smasher]

Hi folks

About a month ago I replaced a 40GB HDD with a 160GB Western Digital one from Scan. I also ordered 2 x 1GB RAM (also from Scan) to give it a bit more speed as the laptop is 3 years old.

My sister now has the laptop with her and yesterday it wouldn't load past the DELL splash screen after freezing up in Windows.

She can boot from the Windows XP Home CD but it won't repair the windows installation, instead it goes into a DOS prompt stating "C:\Windows" and stalls there, it's impossible to type more than one character at the prompt, e.g. it says type exit but you can only type "e".

It refuses to reinstall windows too - it copies the setup files but stops at some point (should get exact details later).

She's put the DELL diagnostics CD in which has apparently done diagnostic checks lasting a couple of hours and passed everything as working.

I had a chat with Scan tech support yesterday and today who advised downloading Western Digital's troubleshooter to single out the HDD seeing as that's a new component, sadly that's not possible as the laptop won't boot into windows. She can't find anywhere to burn a boot CD for the WD diagnostic either. They also recommended testing the RAM with memtest but we have the same problem with no windows boot or being able to burn a CD. I'm assuming these individual tests do something over and above what the DELL checks have done?

She's tried tapping F8 to go into safe mode which doesn't work.

Advice would be appreciated (or ideas on what else to try to diagnose this) because I really don't know where to go with this now! She's home from 1st Nov on a reading week so hopefully I can sort something out by then with your expert help!!

[pardal51]

1st of all always check if the components are sitting securely in the sockets, this may sound stupid but I've come across this situatuion many times.

as advised by scan staff, put the old hdd back and install only one stick of ram and try to boot. repeat for the other stick (do it for both slots). In this case you check whether ram is okay for this config. memtest will take long, but it is always good.

try a different media to install the OS or even an external dvd-rom as either media or drive can be faulty, considering it is copying files but not passing past it.

report back!!!!

cheers

[peterb]

Agree with te above posts - when you get it back restore the old components to see if that makes things better. Then you can change one thing at a time. Meanwhile you can create a memtest boot disk on another machine, and download the WD diagnostics in preparation - should they be needed. My first thought is that it is a memory problem.

When you changed the hard drive, did you do a fresh install from the Dell CD/DVD that came with the machine, or did you clone the old disk to the new one?

[Smasher]

Hi and thanks for the replies - I did a whole new install from the DELL XP Home CD, followed by the drivers etc. on another CD. It was fantastic for about 2-3 weeks.

She's not too sure how to remove the RAM so to prevent any risk of damage I'll wait till she's home on Friday and do it myself then. I still have the old HDD and the memory sticks so will experiment with each in different slots as above.

A part of me wants to go back to DELL and say a £600 laptop should last longer than 3 years!!

Couple of questions about the memtest and WD diagnostics:

1) Memtest - I'm downloadingthe ".iso" file aren't I?

2) WD Diagnostic - there are two available: Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS (CD) and Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for DOS (CD) - seems the first one is what I need but just want to confirm!

Would both these tools fit onto one boot CD seeing as they're only a few MB each?

Cheers