Packard Bell....help please!!!!

[davoew]

Hi all, I'm new here so please be gentle.
Recently my brother in law formatted his hard drive and then handed me the computer to reload windows xp onto. (dont ask me why because i dont know)

It is a Packard Bell iMedia P806 (yes i should have known better!!)
Pentium 4
80gb barracuda
512mb ram
Motherboard is MS-6763 (which doesnt even seem to exist)

I try and load windows and it hangs during setup, where it restarts and loads windows.
Have tried the microsoft site (unhelpful as usual) they suggested upgrading the bios, which i did. Same problem.
Tried Packard Bell site (even worse) no help there! they suggested loading chipset drivers with windows (took me a day to figure it out and do it, and it didnt work)
If i put hard drive in my computer and load windows then put hd into Packard Bell it freezes at screen asking to load windows normally, safe mode etc. Doesnt matter which option i choose.
Have tried Xp home / Xp prof even win 95. same result.

Help me please before i destroy a perfectly good window throwing this computer through it.
thanks in advance!

[profdlp]

Go into your BIOS and look for any performance-related settings and crank everything down to dog-slow levels. Then give it another shot.

Do you have any suspicions at all about any of the hardware (other than the fact that it's a P-B...)? For instance, if you're hearing any unusual noises from the HD you might want to check that out. A couple passes of Memtest-86 (http://www.short-media.com/download.php?dc=58) wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

This appears to be an mATX system. Is that correct?

[davoew]

excuse my ignorance but what is a mATX system?
The thing is about 2 years old. runs at 2.8 ghz.
No strange noises etc. It was working fine until my brother in law formatted it.
Will swap the memory with my computer and see what happens.

[profdlp]

mATX = Micro ATX (ATX is the standard form factor in computers these days.)

It's a little fella, right? :p

[davoew]

yep, i think so.
In my day it was called a mini tower..lol

[davoew]

thanks for your help.... it was the memory.
It had 2 x 256mb chips. Took the first one out, rebooted, and it completed its windows install and is now running.
Thanks.

now im off to the shed to get a hammer. Ill teach this this chip to waste days of my time !!!


thanks again...great site and great advice.

[profdlp]

See the link in my first post in this thread and check out Memtest-86. It wouldn't hurt to be sure that the remaining chip is good.

For that matter, before you get the hammer out you might want to test the other stick as well. See if it will work solo, or maybe in another computer. It may not actually be bad - just incompatible.

Glad you're back in business. :thumbsup: