Demons, software of harddware?

I have my cousins computer and have till tomorrow night to figure out her problems and try to solve them..
Dell Dimensions 8300 2 yrs old
512 MB Ram
2.? ghz processor, plenty of hard drive space
XP Home Edition
She said: was doing fine (she thought) till she left AOL and went on her local provider to have DSL.
First problem she noticed was no security lock on secure sites
then she could not boot up normally got the Blue screen. Could only access in Safe Mode.
First thing I did was load a registry repair and found over 300 problems...fixed
then loaded Ad Aware. Could not update because she is set for the DSL and I am dial up and in Safe mode it will not let me change that. but without updates it found 151 critical entries... deleted.
Ran C Cleaner...nothing much there ... some issues Fixed
the error message on the blue screen reads:

A problem has been detected and windows has shut down to prevent damage to yourcomputer. (There is plenty of disk space open, no drivers were identified in the message , is not a video problem, bios checks out okay
error numbers were
XXX stop: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, ox80612c2D, oxEDA9D8DC, ox00000000)
beginning dump of physical memory, physical dump memory

Okay I did a check on the error and it says it has something to do with the ram...there are 2 chips of 256 Each...I tried removing them and switching them and even tried a chip that I had of 128 Ram... same blue screen and same message.

Where do I go from here? How can I manually download updates to the Ad Aware to update the program and to manually download updates for Spy Bot S&D?

HELP HELP HELP

 

Passed all tests... several times... still the same

 

But the computer boots up into safemode fine? Or did I miss the memo.

 

Safe mode with networking should clear that up.

Also, removing AOL should be a primary, since AOL likes to add protocols within the network stack, which could cause what the OP is seeing.

 

removing AOL was one of the first things I did... I will try the safe mode with networking and try to go online with it. I have printed out the instructions for the restoring...but I have a minor problem...NO XP Home disk... she did not bring her disks...only the computer...she lives a ways from here. I do have an XP Pro and I will try with that if it will let me. can but try anyway...you people are great and I will be checking in to see if there are any other suggestions or with my results...I only have about 24 hours to get this thing squared away...

 

You will not be able to user your xp pro disk, for her xp home computer.

 

This is a LOOONG shot, but ye could try two things.

First, while in safe mode, click START, then RUN, then type in msconfig (press enter).
Click the radial button "Selective Startup".
Uncheck "Load startup Items".

Press Ok, then OK, to reboot.

or

in addition to the above, try:
Click the services tab.

check the box, hide MS services.
Then click the "disable all" button.
Press OK, then ok again to reboot.

Or, try the diagnostic startup, radial button.

In addition, since the error code does point to ram (most likely, even when it states it is good), try removing a stick of ram, and seeing if it boots. If it doesn't, switch the ram).

This is what I'd do, before anything I stated above. I really do not trust ram checkers. Sometimes they are accurate, other times, they fail miserably. Hence, the ram checkers are low level checkers, and xp uses ram differently. IMHO.

 

yeah I found out the pro won't work...it wanted to install a new setup...and when I rebooted it did a chkdsk thing...said it was 3 stages and all p***ed... files, indexes and security description but my volume was dirty...said that it discovered some free space marked as allocated...but still no regular boot.. and the booting in safemode with networking still will not let me change to dial up... sigh*** will try THEEFOOL suggestions next... hey what do I have to loose?... as long as she can still get in...it is free of a lot of junk she didn't know was there...

 

Well I guess it is been there done that... I did the Ram stick switching before I ran the ram check thing... I switched them and I even removed both and used a stick of my own... same thing happened...

well when I did the stuff THEEFOOL said... the selective startup and the unchecking stuff... the only difference noted on the trying to reboot was NO blue screen of death... no nothing...BLACK instead... but that is back now...was almost comforting to see it again....*** sound like too much turkey?***

 

Can't do it...I do not have XP home edition disk, only XP Media (from my DELL) and XP Pro ...so they do not work(tried the PRO) . I am currently running the diagnostics that are in a partition on the harddrive. I have cleaned as best I can and I still cannot access the net because it will not let me change from DSL to dialup no matter what kind of safe mode I boot in. I will keep looking for something. Maybe go back to DELL's website and see if there are any ideas there. In any event it is over this evening. She will pick it up to take home. Thank you for your help!... it has given me some things to try I never would have thought of.

 

IT IS FIXED!!!!!
Don't ask me how... I started it in VGA mode... it went to the desktop and I changed the resolution...then tried rebooting and it booted up NORMALLY!!... go figure... everything on the DELL site checked out ...no hardware problems...no memory problems... so why it is now running okay I do not know... but it is clean of malware and conflicts and looks to be running smoothly... YEEE HAWWWWW... thank you folks for your input...I am sure some of the stuff may have helped it straighten out...