BSODs & Unable to Install WinXP Home Edition

First, the specs:
- Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
- CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
- Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply
- BFG Tech BFGR88640GTSOCE GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6600
- ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

My husband and I have identically built computers. We built them at the same time with the same parts, all shown here.

The problem:
It started yesterday. Just before a class of his (my husband just recently started college), my husband had a paper he needed to print. So he took a 1GB USB data stick we had (I'm not sure the brand - I can't seem to find it now and I wouldn't be suprised if he chucked it in a fit of anger over this) and stuck it into his computer in order to transfer the paper to it and then have me print it out.
In doing so, he tried to transfer the paper and couldn't. He got several error messages, then he rebooted and continued getting error messages. I wish I knew what those said but I didn't really notice till he started getting BSOD's.
So before his class, he decided to reformat and reinstall WinXP. And here's where the big errors began.
He left while it started reinstalling. The first time through, it couldn't even format the beginning partition correctly. The second time he tried when he came back, he got to installing WinXP itself and it said, "Cannot find Dirtbike.bm_" Then it locked up after that.
We tried several more times following. Third time, he got all the way through. However, when he started setting everything up and updating WinXP, he noticed some of the Windows Updates were failing. Upon further investigation, it turned out that SP2 had not installed (and it's on both of our Windows XP discs).
So he decided to reformat/reinstall yet again. This time, if I remember right, it did not install WinXP SP2 again, so he went to the Microsoft website and found a download for it. It got to the last bit of installing and BSOD'ed out, stating not enough space. A second try led to the same conclusion.
He then tried to reformat/reinstall once more and got stuck towards the tail end of installing WinXP and couldn't full complete it, it simply froze. All in all, throughout the tries, he probably got 4 BSOD's, all different things.

We're at a loss here. He's tried reseating the RAM, in case that was the problem, and even switching the slots the RAM was in but that didn't help. We don't have any working extra RAM (save what's in my computer, but we don't want to muck around with taking any of it's memory out now) to switch out to test if it's the RAM.
Also, we've tried installing from both his WinXP disc, which is an older disc, and my OEM WinXP disc that we bought when we built these two computers, so it's not the discs themselves.
Would an upgrade to Vista solve any of these problems? Can anybody give us an idea on the next step we should try? We're considering taking it to one of the few repair places in town, just to see if they can find what's wrong.
The husband, in another part of his life, used to work with computer repair and can do a fair bit himself - but technology is beginning to outpace him and with our newer computers, he's kind of at a loss.

 

Not sure if you are doing a clean install or not but by the sounds of things you are not. By doing a clean install you can wipe out all partitions and then repartition and reformat your drive. Remember though by doing this all data on the drive will be lost.
Here are step by step instructions:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/xp_home_install_-_graphic.htm

Good Luck

 

Actually yes, it's a clean install and total reformat.
I think we've actually tracked the problem to a fault stick of RAM now. He removed a stick and got WinXP + SP2 to install fully. Now he's installing the motherboard drivers and we'll see how it does from there.
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it We're such net geeks, being without one of our computers is a sad, sad experience.

 

Glad you found your problem. Welcome to MajorGeeks!

E

 

Thank you so much, I appreciate it I'm not much help in the geek department, at least with computers anyhow! But I definitely like the warm welcome

 

Alright, I /thought/ we had solved the problem with new RAM. Now I know we haven't.
Last night it started BSOD'ing on him again and now he can't even boot from CD to begin installing WinXP.

 

If you can note what the bsod says, and post it, e might be able to help more.
If he can get into the Windows at all, OR, IF NOT INTOTHE REPAIR INSTALL, It would be worth running running CHKDSK /R.
Although early days, I would also be tempted to check the hard drive, with a software from the hard drive manufacturer- again if you can get into Windows-- Look in majorgeeks downloads under
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html
The BSOD will help us to narrow it down-

 

Unfortunately I'm not sure what the BSOD's themselves were. It was a string of them, several in a row. So he decided to reinstall WinXp and can't even start because he gets to "\ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded. The error code is 4."

 

It could well be the other stick of ram, although I see this associated with error code 7, too.
It is worth going into the bios, and load defaults, press f10, click Y, click o.k/enter, especially if you have made any changes, but even if you have not.
This could apply if you set the memory to spd - set it to auto.
But faulty memory could well be your problem.
Just a few days ago, someone else on here had two corsair rams go faulty- unusual for good ram, but it happens.

 

Well, when he ordered new RAM, he replaced both sticks, you see. He ran for near a week on 1GB and had no problems whatsoever.
His computer finally just started hanging up even before it got to detecting drives. It wouldn't detect the keyboard so he couldn't get into BIOS to do anything with it.
Now he believes it to be a motherboard issue and we've ordered a new one and a new harddrive as well - we'll see how that goes. Otherwise there's not much else to replace, afterall - save the video card, processor, power supply and CD Rom.

 

Let us know how you get on - we try to offer fixes, if we can , to save your hard earned cash - but sometimes time is not on your side.

 

Oh I definitely will. It's definitely a shame, we just built these machines in February and now here we go again. But I will update on how it turns out

 

Alright, new motherboard (same as the last one) and brand new harddrive installed. It ran fine for a good 3-4 hours and mow is getting 'Bad Page Header' BSOD's just after startup.
The only thing left to the box that ISN'T brand new is the video card and power supply. And that's it. Could this be a video card issue?
The only things installed on the computer are Symantec Antivirus, Cisco Clean Access Agent (both of these are required by our college to be able to log into their network), Steam, World of Warcraft and I believe the EA downloader for some games he had bought online.
EA did get an error and restarted sometime after that.

 

Its worth a look at the qa's at nvidia support, amongst other things, as it could be a driver problem.
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...nMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=&p_topview=1

Note nvidias answer on warcraft blue screen (bsod) on that page
Some users have reported blue screen crashes (nv4_disp.dll) while playing World of Warcraft with GeForce 8800 based graphics cards on Window XP operating system. Setting in-game multisampling to "1x" or "2x" appears to eliminate this issue in the majority of reported cases. To restore higher level multisampling, please use driver version 158.22 or higher.

Your initial bsod was caused when using a usb stick - check legacy usb support in your Bios.

Memory

De-bugging
See Adrenalynes permanent (I think permanent) post
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246