[davesfx]

**UPDATE**
okay so after giving up and starting to look at tigerdirect and newegg...i came across a windows 98 cd while I was pondering. So i installed 98, perfectly fine w/out a single problem. Have used it for a little bit, seems stable enough, but this confuses the heck out of me. If every component tested good, giving the mobo a bad rap, how in the heck can I install 98 if the mobo was bad.... plus get all the updates. But dont answer that question... What I am looking for is how/why I cant upgrade from 98 to xp Tried upgrading and new install and it still locks up at the same place. It acts like its going to, it really does, especially if you do the upgrade, mostly windows based..then BAM! back to the same old problem. Any clues on this?

Edited by davesfx, 23 September 2005 - 05:39 PM.

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With widows 98 installed run prime95 this will test the psu, mobo, cpu, ram and heat related problems, let it run for 24 hours if it does not fail then we can be sure these compoments are good.

I know you tested each of these components but do it with prime in this machine all together for a 24 hour peiod of time. If it checks out

Then do a low level format of the drive and reinstall XP

Edited by Doby, 23 September 2005 - 09:17 PM.

[Doby]

With widows 98 installed run prime95 this will test the psu, mobo, cpu, ram and heat related problems, let it run for 24 hours if it does not fail then we can be sure these compoments are good.

I know you tested each of these components but do it with prime in this machine all together for a 24 hour peiod of time. If it checks out

Then do a low level format of the drive and reinstall XP

Edited by Doby, 23 September 2005 - 09:17 PM.

[davesfx]

ok tried that it didn't work either.

reset the cmos, still stalled at the same point.
flashed bios to previous version rather than latest, same problem.
copied entire contents of cd to harddrive and ran winnt from local i386 folder, locked up at the same point.

heck I even called microsotft yesterday morning they didn't have a clue, asked me to download the 6 floppy disks. did that and it gave me new light, well it still errored, but at least its a new error that I can hunt down.

file biosinfo.inf could not be loaded. error code 4096
(no antivirus installed)

any clues?

Edited by davesfx, 25 September 2005 - 07:42 AM.

[Doby]

still looking, that error has tons of info to sfit thru but no fixes I can find,

Keep me posted will let you know if I find anything

[what_the_]

It sounds to me as if you have 2 separate problems:

The only common issue to your friends motherboard and yours is your RAM, so obviously the first problem is here. (As the speeds are different, I would normally put the slowest stick in the first slot to ensure the bios sets the slower speed.) From your original posting it sounds like one of the 256s is faulty.

The second problem is likely to be corrupted data written over system files.

If you reset the bios on your friends computer, disconnect his hard drive and CD Roms, you can try booting up using a Dos boot disc. If it will run in Dos you can format the hard drive (as FAT2) from Dos before reinstalling Windows (reformat to NTSC). If it wont run in Dos then the problem is not related to the hard drive.

Good Luck,
Graham

[davesfx]

thanks for the comments

All of my equipment has tested out good. I completely agree with the last statement of corrupting data and system files. This would take the first disk down and if I could get to the point on the xp recovery cd that I needed to, I would be able to fix it and be up and running. The fault is that I can not load the setup from cd or floppies. Here is even more of a problem. Although XP is a 32 bit OS, the boot disk and setup loader is 16 bit. I have no problems loading win98 (16 bit OS) on this machine. I have a problem with the xpboot getting to the recovery/installation screen. If I could get to this, I would be in business.

After testing everything out, I would have to say something on the motherboard has gone bad and why win98 can load and I can use it fine with stability, well, that is where the problem lies. I have swapped everything out, but I haven't swapped a mobo out, because I dont have another one

After countless hours dealing with microsoft, I have left them stumped.
Which btw, microsoft's customer service and research team are great...but then why are we here helping each other out.

They have no clue, I have no clue and it seems that everyone around has no clue...

I have been a Sr Support Lead for many years and with all of my dealings I have never left a project undone and stated "Just replace everything!!!" but that seems to be the picture in this one.

If you have any clues or advice that hasn't been outlined, please feel free to let me know. I am eager to try anything until I can go out and buy a new mobo..

Have a great day

[what_the_]

I admire your tenacity, most people I know would have given up by now. But I really think you can beat this.

3 years ago a friend had a very similar problem. He brought it to me after he had been trying to reinstal XP for about a week. I worked on it for 2 days and couldn't figure it out. Your XP problem sounds very similar. I gave up on XP and installed Linux.

Linux loaded and worked fine so he left it on there. Later I put a second partition on his drive. We still couldn't load XP so I loaded Win 98 without any problems. He took it away and a week later he reinstalled XP without any problems.

The only hardware he changed in between was his video card????

I don't understand what happened, but maybe this will give some other geek a clue. Don't give up!

Graham