[compu-noob]

Hello all..
Ive recently come back off a 3 week road trip only to find my computer boots up to the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) as far as i was aware it was in perfect working order (all be it a little choppy due to lack of space) before i went away now i think its fairly apparent whats happened as when i walked into my room the installation dosk for XP Pro SP2 was next to the computer (IT WASNT when i left) I have young mischevious cousins who im willing to believe have been in tinkering! ANyway to cut a long story shortish i need to wipe and re-install windows XP SP2 to sort my computer out.. however i insert the disk and it gives me the option to boot into XP or boot from disk but the arrow will not move the selection to boot from XP so im forced to boot from disk.. it then skips to the next stage where it asks me to press F2 for a ASR (Automated System Recovery) or press F6 to install 3rd party SCSI or RAID drivers (i seem to remember having difficulty with this on the original install) again it will not let me press F2 or F6 it then proceeds to start the install process for XP then crashes pretty much staright away into the BSOD with the usual message..

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps:

Disable or uninstall any anti virus, disk defragmentation or backup utilities. Chc your hard drive configuraion, and check for any updated drivers. RUN CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and restart your computer.

Technical Information:
*** STOP: 0x00000024 (0x00190203,0x89B853D0,0xC0000102,0x00000000)

IM still at a relatively basic user level of computers although i do understand and have build my own i just need a point in the right direction and a few refresher pointers as ive not tinkered since i built this computer 3-4 years ago one thing i do know is if its a driver problem i may be a little screwed for now as i have no floppy drive to install drivers :s

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in Advance Mark

[yeshuas]

Can you get into the bios at all?

What kind of HDD do you have i.e is it IDE or SAT-A

[compu-noob]

Hi yeshuas i have SATA drives in a NVIDIA STRIPE showing as healthy at 149G

I seen to remember having problems with drivers on the origional install maybe if i can remember correctly the Silicon Image Sil 3114 Softraid 5 Controller if that helps or is relative to my problem :s

P.s Cant get into the BIOS i thought i was being noobish as i had the keyboard plugged into the USB port but ive just tried a standard one and still no joy

Cheers

[yeshuas]

First of all, since you have SATA HDD's you will need the drivers on a floppy, to install XP again.

Not sure why you aren't able to get into bios, unless you aren't hitting the correct key, usually "delete" and on some it is "F2"
Try holding the correct one down as it boots if you haven't already.

[yeshuas]

another thing to think about is your Raid utility, do you remeber how to get into it, your cousins may have gotten into it and changed the settings.

[compu-noob]

Thanks for your Help ive not managed to get anywere for today and i have to stop trying soon i have the drivers here on a floppy but the computer is just not registering any commands the keyboards (ive tried 3) are lighting up but not respong to DEL or F2 ive tried a boot disk and a different XP set up disk the computer just ignores them all and weirdly continues along the path of an install even though there is not set up disk/s in the drives.. Im baffled lol... is it worth me taking out the battery on the BIOS for a bit?

Cheers

[yeshuas]

Removing the battery may help, but you may also have to change the jumper for the bios at the same time, all boards are different to some extent when it comes to defaulting the bios to factory

[ar1stotle]

Are you using retail Windows cds or vendor restore disks?

[compu-noob]

Hello all thanks for your continuing support! Just to keep you updated... I'm using retail windows disks,
I managed to reset the bios by removing the battery for a couple of minutes then i was able to format my drives and wipe windows. I also managed to reinstall windows.. here's the bit were i got lost i disabled SATA Raid in the bios and was able to reinstall windows now its Re-installed is there any way to enable a RAID strip or will i have to format and Re-install again? Also now i have installed windows and it boots up fine works for a couple of minutes and then the little egg timer (loading icon) comes on like the processors at maximum capacity and im not able to access anything like the start menu internet etc but i have opened task manager looked at all the processes and looked at performance and the CPU usage is at 2% and the processes are all basic windows ones?

Cheers

Mark

[NT50]

You actually need to install Windows AFTER you setup the RAID.