My roommate's computer is busted.

Spampy

Hey guys, long time no login :P

I had a question and maybe you guys have some insight into this. Trying to use the restore disks for his HP Pavilion dv5000 did not work, because once the software was finished installing, the computer would get stuck in a loop and restart every time it saw the xp load screen appear. I figured this was a fluke, so I tried to install Win7 on it, and it comes back with a "The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install windows, click "OK" to restart the computer, and then restart the installation." Next, I tried a freshly burned Ubuntu 9.0 disk, and that one is the most strange, because no matter what you do at the screen, it will restart after about a minute or so. Any ideas/requests for more info are greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Thrax

Sounds like it's a bum hard disk or memory. Allow me to quote one of our articles:

...and three CDs prepared with the following utilities:

HitachGST's <a href="http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT&quot; target="_blank">Drive Fitness Test</a> (DFT) CD image
Seagate's <a href="http://download.seagate.com/seatools/registration.nsf/eula/desktop&quot; target="_blank">SeaTools for DOS</a> CD image
<a href="http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.5.iso.zip&quot; target="_blank">Memtest86</a> CD image

To freely burn these utilities to CD, Icrontic has <a href="http://icrontic.com/articles/burn_iso_disc_image_free&quot; target="_blank">prepared a guide</a> to accomplish the task. Once all three CDs are ready, proceed with each of the following steps in sequence. If you uncover a problem at any step, it is imperative that you remedy the issue before moving on. You may also find that resolving an intermediary issue eliminates the 0x0000008E stop error, so be sure to test Windows before continuing with additional steps.
<ol>
<li>Evaluate the condition of your PC's memory by <a href="http://icrontic.com/articles/diagnose_with_memtest86">testing it</a> with Memtest86. If this fails, you need to replace your system memory and continue.</li>
<li>Evaluate the condition of your hard drive by testing it with <a href="http://icrontic.com/articles/hard_drive_diagnostics">Drive Fitness Test</a>. Should DFT fail to correctly function on your system, <a href="http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=201271&quot; target="_blank">perform a long scan</a> with SeaTools. If this fails, you need to replace your hard drive after <a href="http://icrontic.com/articles/easy_data_recovery&quot; target="_blank">archiving your information</a>. If simple archival fails, Icrontic has prepared an <a href="http://icrontic.com/articles/advanced_data_recovery&quot; target="_blank">emergency data recovery</a> guide to account for this issue. Replacing your hard drive will require that you <a href="http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_install_windows_xp&quot; target="_blank">reinstall Windows</a>.</li>

Spampy

Thanks Thrax!

Spampy

I think the HD is busted. I haven't been able to grab CDRs, but the BIOS has a HD test and the Win7 disk has a memory test app. Between them, the BIOS checked the HD and passed it on the quick test but failed it on the Full test, and the Win7 test found no issues with the memory. I'm taking this to mean that the Hard Drive is dead/something is wrong with it, do you agree?

Thrax

It's quite probable. You can hook it up to an external adapter on another PC and try to grab useful data, but I'd definitely replace the disk.