Help!!! Parents computer gone screwy

[danball1976]

My parents computer is totally messed up. When attempting to re-install windows (attempting to do a format and install), it freezes at trying to detect previous versions of windows. Also, if it will start up, it acts extremely slow, and apparently there are all sorts of unecessary junk that found its way on to their computer.

Also, it freezes at trying to boot up from a floppy disc, even if there isn't anything there. Its supposed to say "non system disc or disc error", but it just wont do anything.

[Black Hawk]

Try clearing the CMOS and running memtest.

[primesuspect]

www.memtest.org


Ahh, it's been a while :D

[danball1976]

Well, this laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. Although it could be the motherboard, because it is 3 years old (KT7-RAID)

However, it could be spyware. If it will startup, it doesn't get any error. Powersupply, though, has a 5v output of 4.81-4.86 and 12v has an output of 11.86 around there. I think its an antec 300W PSU.

Also, I can't really do anything at all on it.

When doing safemode, the farthest it gets is a driver called mup.sys out of the /system32/drivers folder, sits there for 2-3 minutes, with slight hard drive activity, and then it restarts.

My Mom says that when she ran a virus scan it found about 12 or 13 (!) all trojans. I think I might run scandisk if possible.

[primesuspect]

Memtest.org also offers a bootable CD ISO for those who don't have floppy drives....

[danball1976]

Well, if I can try one more thing, boot up to command prompt, I can probably format the hard drive that way.

Also, considering how long memtest can run (especially on 512MB), I don't really have the time for that.

[primesuspect]

Oh come on, it doesn't take that long. On a KT7 -era board it should take about 15 minutes to run all 7 tests..

[danball1976]

Ok, I'll run it.

[entropy]

I can see prime doing the Happy Dance in victory now ;D

[TheSmJ]

From what you have told us, I'd agree that it's most likely the RAM at fault.

[primesuspect]

:)

[danball1976]

Well, it passed with no errors. So that can't be it.

Could it be the hard drive, CPU or motherboard?

CPU is a AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67GHz .18u 256KB cache.
<hr>
For an emergency forum, this isn't very busy

[danball1976]

You guys aren't helping!!!

[primesuspect]

Well it sounds like the motherboard, if it won't post consistently.

Hey man! This is a saturday! We're out living life, G! ;D

[danball1976]

Its posting completely, not the motherboard there. I'm taking it to Best Buy, this is beyond me now. They'll do a complete diagnostic.

--EDIT--
Went to BestBuy, they were no help, it would take 2-3 days to figure it out, my parents can do this in Amarillo, not Wichita Falls. They also wanted an original XP install disk, which I don't have. I am letting it sit at detecting previous versions of windows, which there is hard drive activity, I didn't let it wait longer last time.

--EDIT--
Its now doing a full format, but really slow. Could it be that the CPU cache is going, and wouldn't memtest catch this?

[danball1976]

--bump--

[Tex]

so you formated or what? where are you at?

[danball1976]

I got the message that Windows could not format the disk. So me and my Dad went to Best Buy to buy a new Maxtor 60GB hard drive. That fixed the problem.

Whats interesting, that on the old Western Digital 40GB drive, HP's symbol is on it. And it says it was manufactured to HP's standards. It was also manufactured April, 17, 2002.