That part's straightforward.
"If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer."
Already tried that.
"Check for viruses on your computer."
Did that with Norton Antivirus. Found no viruses. I am aware that it may take other antivirus software to flush out any viruses, so would it be easier to download or just purchase it if need be?
"Remove any newly-installed hard drives or hard drive controllers."
I don't think that's a problem, but I did recently install a 512-mb RAM card (PC 100/133) as well as a Dynex DX-E101 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (rev.F1) to adapt the computer to a Comcast cable modem for internet service. I wonder if these items have anything to do with my problems?
"Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated."
How in the world do I do that one?
"Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer."
I tried to run CHKDSK /F, but that apparently isn't on this computer, so I ended up running SCANDISK instead on the C: drive. No problems were found, so needless to say, restarting the computer was irrelevant.
"STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF8FF9524,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)"
If anyone can interpret this compu-gibberish, I would be grateful.
I am also aware that I may need an SCSI driver, so I suspect I will be purchasing one soon. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Are you sure you have enough ram and cpu processor power for XP?
Did you check this out first?
I posted this under Chat, since posting it under News would probably count as abuse. I’m not getting replies, though. Would this thing do better under Bloggers/Personal?
You need to reformat the hard drive before installing XP. I suspect you still have some of ME in place.
Check out this site. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324103 Mentions a boot sector virus. If thats the case your hard drive is a paperweight.
Lastly running XP with a 667mhz processor will be an exercise in frustration. The amount of memory you have is OK. XP will run minimally on 512mb, better on 1 gig, and optimally on 2 gigs of memory. ( Which I have)
Though that may be because I have been working with this stuff since Intel came out with the first 8008, and can scan over the results from a search pretty quickly.
So ... I ran a search on some of the key words and numbers in your messages, and came up with the following pages that look worth your time:
Buy a new drive, they are cheap, use the original C drive as the second drive to save your files, do a clean install on the new drive. If you already have two drives take out the C drive and install a new drive in it’s place ... move files back and forth until you have them all recovered.
Yep, it’s a huge pain, but the road you are on smells like doom.
I am doing this now ... Windows XP sucks ... but I must use it for other reasons.
1) You said the CPU was 667MHz; does that mean it's a Pentium-3? (Not that this is likely to make any difference - but it's nice to be sure).
2) Have you tried checking the support info at Micron's site?
3) What is the model name of your machine? (For example, the machine on which I am composing this response is a Dell Inspiron 2650 laptop).
FWIW, my guess at this point is that the motherboard (btw, what is its model identifier?) chipset or the BIOS (and which company made the BIOS?) is failing to handle XP correctly. I had the identical problem with an orphaned PC (350MHz Pentium-2 with 384MB memory) when I tried to make it useful again by installing WindowsXP Home edition on it. Eventually, I gave up and returned the PC to the trash where I had found it.
Oh, yes....which variety of XP are you trying to install? And have you thought of adding a hard drive and installing Linux on that? You could then use Linux - I recommend SUSE, but almost any major distro would be good - to back up the data on your C: drive before doing the wipe-and-install recommended by other FReepers. Of course, if my guess is correct (and I hope it isn't), none of what any of us are suggesting is going to do you any good: There may be a BIOS upgrade that you could apply (but there probably isn't), but you may well wind up getting a new PC, anyway.
Restart the computer and boot from the WinXP cd. Install XP on an empty partition of your c: drive. DO NOT DO AN UPGRADE FROM ME! This way after it installs and reboots it will ask you each time which operating system you want to boot with. If you have problems with XP, you can still boot with ME and try to fix it.
This is the catch. As XP originally came out it would run OK on such a machine. But XP is now up to SP2 and actually SP3 if you count all the fixes after you install WinXP/SP2 on a machine. All these updates and fixes make 1.5ghz CPU and 512mb-1gb ram a more realistic minimum in my opinion
#2 I'm just about positive you can clean install with your XP upgrade edition provided you have a CD disc of an earlier OS to insert when the XP installation asks you to....To verify that you own an earlier OS to qualify to use an upgrade edition