Ok. To start off I only formatted this heap of crap last week for the same issue and now it's occured again, I did say that I think the issue could be both RAM and a HDD to the people with the issue.

So today I get a phonecall (1 week later) saying the the problem is occuring again, now I've done a little research on this Bluescreen error but don't have details yet about what the bluescreen says. From what I've found my prediction appears to be correct, the last time I looked, it appeared to be a MEMLOCK error, not sure if that could be a result of the CPU or the RAM. Anyways. I think it's RAM and the HDD or possibly interuptions inside the case with fans etc (I think the last is a low possiblility).

Anyways, does anyone have any ideas on this matter, if you do it would be greatly appretiated if someone could post here, thanks in advance. Kimck 098

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RAM?

1. Run Memtest86 (runs off a bootable floppy so set your bios to boot from floppy )

Or

2. If youve got 2 sticks in there try booting with just one of the sicks, then try just the other one, if it starts up then you know the stick not plugged in is your issue.

HDD's?

Seagate, maxtor...whatever thay all have diagnostic tools to download from their websites to check for issues and sometimes even fix em/

Heat?

Turn it on for a bit and see how hot its getting as well as cpu and gpu, you'll have a northbridge and a southbridge on your motherboard, they each communicate between you cpu ram and other chipsets, (usually they have a fan or heatsink over each of them) if these seem to be getting to hot to touch then its possible that this has happened previously and fried one of them.

Theres a few ideas to try (sorry if you already know em) ...oh and dont forget to discharge your static by touching some metal on your pc case and anything in the room thats also metal and grounded....dont want to make it worse do you.

hope you work it out

Thanks for the information. I was looking for someone to backup my ideas just so I didn't think I was wrong or right. And yeah, I sorta knew most of that. I'd had crappy RAM before which was just pulled straight out of a draw infront of me, wonderful 'eh? Didn't even come with a Anti-Static bag (and no, I wasn't the one buying it and wasn't actually there at the time to say anything) Joys I had with that. 256MB RAM £50, not mine so I didn't care much

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the joys of troubleshooting eh!
\l/..more stuff you probably already know: (im that bored)
The windows recovery console might help you repare it, if its a software problem (bootable from your xp cd)
(hardware is likely but its possible that after the format some software that caused the origional error has been reinstalled and has once again corrupted regestries or the like)

Tbh you need to find out what the bsod has to say for itself, before you run out and buy more expensive ram, sometimes they can indicate a range of possible issues, that might help you narrow it down.

good luck (and slap the next person you see buying ram modules with no static bag, that'll learn em )

Yeah, I sorta knew about the software thing too. I found that out the hardway by installing new drivers for my PC... which Windows DID NOT like. But I have no idea how to use the Recovery on the disc. I know how to access it but not to use it

Anyways, this problem has been sorted, I ran some tests to find out and it was indeed what we both predicted, The Hard-Drive. The test gave back a result that said this drive in funtioning but is in need of a replacement. Anyways, I thought I can't be arsed to fix this PC all the time so I told them a new one to buy (Although something tells me it won't be long)

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