[dnrflorence]

I have been helping this guy at work with his computer. Originally his cooling fan went bad and I replaced it for him. When I booted the computer up (several times) it always gave a window that said that windows had recovered from a seious error. After unsuccessfully being able to find the source of the windows error we decided to reformat the disk. I made the start up disks and they load just fine until disk six. When disk six starts to load I get the blue screen of death which tells me that there has been a problem that is likely caused by the following file: atapi.sys. What does this mean and how do I correct it?

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Did I post this in the wrong place or is everybody else as baffled as I am?

[dnrflorence]

Did I post this in the wrong place or is everybody else as baffled as I am?

[Samm]

Not baffled yet but I'm working on it

Can you tell us which version of windows you're trying to reinstall? I assume by 'start up disks', you are referring to floppies, right? If so, is there a reason why you can't just boot straight from the Windows CD?

[dnrflorence]

I am trying to reinstall Windows Xp Home. I originally tried booting from the CD but it never recognized thr CD. I thought maybe it needed to be formatted with the boot disks. I went to Microsoft and made the boot disks (floppy's) and tried it that way. It worked until it got to disk six and then crashed (blue screen). Any ideas?

[ultimateslacker2]

It probably doesn't recognize the cd because you dont have the boot order to boot off the cd first.

usually to access the bios, you either press F2, F5, F8 , F10, ESC , DEL

[dnrflorence]

Actually the boot order was set to boot from the CD first, then the HD, then the floppy. I reset the order to recognize the floppy first when I tried the boot disks. Any ideas?

[dnrflorence]

Houston....we have a problem. I think that I just lost her. I was sitting here working with it while I was talking to you. I decided to go into safe mode and try to see if I could repair the OS from there. I inserted the XP disc once it had booted into safe mode and tried to do an upgrade ( I was using my XP Pro disc). It was doing just fine. When it collected all of the proper files that it needed to do the upgrade it rebooted. On the POST screen it asked if I wanted to run Windows XP home or Continue with XP PRO setup. I obviously opted for the XP Pro setup. It started the setup and then went back to the post screen where it tried to reboot and ultimately gave me the blue screen of death. I turned it off and tried again and now NOTHING!!!! It turns on but no POST screen, no beeps and apparently no bios! What happened? The monitor isn't even trying to come on like when the computer is off but you have left your monitor on (yellow flashing light instead of solid green). Did I do something or did it give up?

[dnrflorence]

Ok...things are better. I reset the BIOS with the jumper and it is back. In fact, it still wants to set up XP PRO. It is going back into safemode now....no wait, there it goes back to the POST boot! What is going on?

[dnrflorence]

I watched it this time. It seems to be getting to the point where it wants to install Windows then it crashes (blue screen) right before the install just like it did with the boot disks. This will be a thread to remember I'm sure!

[dnrflorence]

Maybe thismight help. I went ahead and rebooted into windows and let it give the error. I got the details from the "Windows has recovered from a serious error" screen. The details are c:\windows\minidump\mini010103-05.dmp and c:\docume~1\cameron\locals~1\temp\WERB.tmp.dir00\sysdata.xml. Does that help any? The funny thing is that it will sit at the user sign in screen all day and never crash. What's up with that?

[Samm]

Hi

Sounds like a serious hardware fault to me. The first thing I would suspect would be the memory. It could also be caused by a number of other things but I would check the RAM first.

I suggest you download memtest86 (see link below). The memtest file will create a bootable floppy containing the memtest program. Boot from the floppy & just let memtest run - this may take a while depending on how much memory is in the system. The program will run continously in a loop so make sure you let it finish at least one complete iteration, unless of course it finds errors before this point, in which case, you've got your answer.

http://www.memtest86.com/

Go to 'Free download' & select v3.3 - pre-compiled for windows & DOS.

[dnrflorence]

I am running the test. It has been running for ten minutes now with no errors. How do I know when it has gone through once. Several tests have completed but is says....wait....I am suddenly getting a boat load of errors. It's up to 25,000 errors. What now?

[Titan8990]

If you have multiple sticks then run memtest with each individual stick. This is to find out which one or both have the errors. It looks like you will have to buy some new RAM. Luckily it has gotten fairly cheap here recently.

Edit: Being more specific, I'm talking about physically taking the stick out of the computer.

Edited by Titan8990, 12 September 2007 - 08:32 PM.

[dnrflorence]

Yep, it's time for some new memory. Thanks for your help.

[Samm]

OK, thought that might be the problem! Titan8990 is right though, if you have more than one stick of ram, then you must run memtest on them one at a time in order to determine which stick or sticks are bad.

If you want to extra sure that you've located problem, then when you've found the faulty stick, I suggest you repeat the test again on the same stick but in a different ram slot, just in case the actual slot is faulty instead of the stick.