[jalway]

Hello,

My brother has a Dell Dimension 3000, with Windows XP Home Edition, service pack 2. It has half a gig of RAM.

The error I receive upon turning the computer on is "STOP: c0000218 unknown Hard Error".

I did a hardward diagnostic with the Dell diagnostic disk. I checked Ram, hard drive, processor, etc., and everything checked out.

It does run in Safe Mode, but the accounts looked to be corrupted.

What should my next course of action be? I was going to use the Windows repair disk, but the Windows XP Home edition is not service pack 2, but the original Windows XP Home that was installed with the computer, circa 2004. Would that repair disk work? If not, I have Windows XP Professonal with Service Pack 2, would that repair disk work?

Thanks for any help!


...John

[Advertisements]

If you installed the SP2 update you can still use the original XP CD to do a repair install, you'll just get a warning that there is a mis-match between what's installed and what's on the CD. Just continue anyway, then download and re-install SP2 when the repair has finished.

[phillip22]

If you installed the SP2 update you can still use the original XP CD to do a repair install, you'll just get a warning that there is a mis-match between what's installed and what's on the CD. Just continue anyway, then download and re-install SP2 when the repair has finished.

[jalway]

Thanks for that help, phillip.

Okay, I did a Windows Repair Install, and it didn't fix the problem. On boot up it now gives me the following error (I've rebooted three times):

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears against, follow these steps:

Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.

Check with you hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to selected Advanced Startup Options, and then selected Safe Mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0x0000006, 0x8068C500, 0xF894F704, 0xF894F404)

Is there any thing further I can do to fix this?


Thanks!

...John

[jalway]

I decided to swap out RAM instead of doing a complete memory test and the same problem arises. Again, hoping for some ideas here.

Thanks!
...John