Weird problem about WinXP.

[DREK]

Hi,

First of all, I don't know if you know what my problem is because my english is not quite good but i guess that's enough to explain the issue. This is driving me crazy. Really. I've been having a problem for 3 days and I cannot find a solution. It all started when I boot up Windows XP and the screen appeared with blue lines, so that, could not see the words, the start bottom and so on. Well, I could see them but not well. Rebooted the system and all was fine again. I thought that it was a problem about the monitor, specifically, about its drivers. So, I went to its webpage and downloaded the drivers. I guess that my problem was gone but I was wrong. Second day, I started the system and the screen came up with blue lines again. I thought that, this time, it was a VGA problem and I updated the VGA drivers. Rebooted the system and the screen was just fine again. Third day, I started the system and the screen was just the same, with blue lines. I didn't know what to do and I rebooted. The screen was weird again, no changes.
I tought that it was time to format, so, booted up with WinXP PRO cd and after loading the files it gave me this BSOD.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=330134

However, I don't have any Roxio software. It doesn't even allow me to reach that part of format or repair. I changed this monitor to see if the problem is about the monitor but with a different monitor the problem still continues. As you can see, now I'm writting on the forum so it was supposed to mean that everything is alright. But, in the morning, when I started the system, the problem appeared again. Hardly ever, the screen is OK. I just want to format it but I cannot do it. You may think that I'm just a PC newbie that cannot format a PC but I've already formatted this PC many times. If anybody can help me, I really appreciate because I'm kind of ...

[downhill]

Try booting into safemode and revoving your video drivers...Reboot into safemode and reload your vid drivers. This way may sound redundent but I've had better luck uninstalling drivers in safemode.

[macko72]

Maybe you should try to test your RAM ??

http://www.memtest86.com/

[The Dude]

Might be time to do some house keeping. Open the case an remove the video card an reinsert it to make sure it didn't creep out of it's socket. Might want to do the same thing with your ram. Good time to blow out the dust bunnies too. You could also try doing a repair if you can get it to bootup with a normal screen.
Repair XP Installation without Clean Install:
Configure your computer BIOS to start from the CD-ROM drive at bootup.

Insert your Windows XP compact disc (CD) into your CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart your computer.

(You can also boot with a Windows 98/Me Startup disk with CD support and run WINNT.EXE in the I386 folder on the CD)

When the "Press any key to boot from CD" message is displayed on your screen, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD.

When you see the following message displayed on the Welcome to Setup screen, press ENTER:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

At this point an option to press R to enter the Recovery Console is displayed. Do not select this option.

On the Windows XP Licensing Agreement screen, press F8 to agree to the license agreement.

Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP is selected in the box, and then press the R key to repair Windows XP.

Follow the instructions on the screen to complete Setup.

This will repair XP and put everything back to as it first was. You will have to reinstall any Hotfixes and OS updates including SP1 and DX9, plus retweak most (but not all) things all over again.

The advanage here is that you will not have to spend hours reinstallindg all your programs again, as well as setting them up...................

[bob-dee`]

I have been infected with spyware, or watever. When I look with cmp with netstat -a I not only see what my system is looking at but a hole bunch of shadows, linking each site I have looked at to another .com site and staying active, or in listening mode.

I was trying to format or delete the partition, but I keep getting , you can not delete The Partition because you will delete files needed to finnish the instalation of XP.

Or if I try to format it says you can not format a disk that has system files or butup file on it.

Is there any way to format a hard drive with XP on it, to make it clean so I can reload my system and hardware?

Bob

[The Dude]

I have been infected with spyware, or watever. When I look with cmp with netstat -a I not only see what my system is looking at but a hole bunch of shadows, linking each site I have looked at to another .com site and staying active, or in listening mode.

I was trying to format or delete the partition, but I keep getting , you can not delete The Partition because you will delete files needed to finnish the instalation of XP.

Or if I try to format it says you can not format a disk that has system files or butup file on it.

Is there any way to format a hard drive with XP on it, to make it clean so I can reload my system and hardware?

Bob

Welcome to speedguide, bob-dee.
You would be better served if you started your own thread with it's own title. People who have already looked over this thread and not replied won't see your post. If I read your post correctly your problem is that you can't format windows from windows. You can't format the partition windows is installed on if windows is running. If you boot from the windows CD and start the install process you will get the option to format the drive during the install. That is refereed to a clean install and it will erase the contents of the drive getting rid of your spyware. Have you tried to remove the spyware? I would recommend downloading and running Ad-aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. Update both of them before running them. They both have free versions. Microsoft's antispyware program is another option.

[bob-dee`]

Thanks for your responce, I am getting to the option to format, but that is where it comes back and says no. You mentioned you can not format a partition while windows is running. I have made a ms dos statup disk, but can not figure how to format from it. I never did learn dos very well and I looked up comands but I have not been able to find examples of how to lay out the camands. I used to use a second hard drive, but had to take it out because it started making noise, I have win 98 on it, I have been thinking of openingup the system and reinstaling it and try to format by going to my computer and clicking the harddrive I want to format and formating it. But I do not know enoug to know if I did that if windows XP would load on it after that.

Any sugesstions.

Bob

[The Dude]

If you want to reinstall windows XP then you need to BOOT from the XP cd and start the install. During the install you will get the option to formate the drive. When I say boot from the CD I mean set the BIOS to boot from the cd, put the cd in and reboot the PC. The PC then boots off the cd, not the hard drive. Putting the CD in while windows is running won't work. It will autostart but you can't install XP on XP that way. It's likely that XP formated your drive in NTFS. Windows 98 (Dos) doesn't support NTFS. Your XP partition will show up as a non dos partition and you need to use the delete non dos partition option in fdisk to remove it. Delpart will also delete NTFS partitions.