cant boot into xp home

[maurob]

Im running with a compaq presario 2600+. I recently found that i cant boot into anymore. once i get to boot up, it gives me a blue screen that tells me to disable antivirus, defragment, and run disk check. i cant get in. cant use safe mode. i cant use last known configuration. i cant boot from my xp home cd. when i use last known, it hangs at agp440.sys then it restarts again. i tried using the xp's cd's recovery console. it gave me "acpi.sys is corrupted. Restart."

Any help? Thanks

[Midknyte]

start with hardware diags first. run a hard drive diag like seatools and a memory test like memtest+. like i have said many times, don't mess with software unless you know your hardware is good.

Tech Tools

[Sterling_Aug]

Sounds like a Windows corruption (if the hardware tests out good). A reinstall may be the best bet.

[Ol'Tunzafun]

This is almost always bad RAM. Either run memtest or swap out some of the RAM.
http://www.memtest86.com/

[maurob]

i cant do a reinstall. Windows wont allow me. it will give me a blue screen with the same error message. cant use my recovery disk nor xp cd.

[Midknyte]

did you do the hardware diagnostics or not?

[maurob]

i changed the boot sequence in the bios. the computer will read the cd but wont use it. it kicks it back to the beginning of the boot screen. it always seems to be stopping at agp440.sys . No memory exchange has been done. i have always used this memory and didnt do any exchange of hardware. ive used the same since day 1

[Midknyte]

why didn't you run the diags? ram and hds can go bad. how old is that system?

You need to start narrowing down the problem. Don't waste time trying to fix software if you didn't check the hardware first.

[maurob]

it doesnt read any cd except for windows xp. I ran seatools and the cdrom doesnt play it. boot sequence is cdrom, removables, then hdd
Its old. it has a good processing speed and all but it has a floppy so that says enough.

[Sterling_Aug]

it doesnt read any cd except for windows xp. I ran seatools and the cdrom doesnt play it. boot sequence is cdrom, removables, then hdd
Its old. it has a good processing speed and all but it has a floppy so that says enough.

What is wrong with PCs with floppies installed?

My new Dell Precision 690 Workstation with dual Xeon quad core processors was built with a floppy disk installed.

Sounds like the CDROM drive is shot. Plug in a new one to test the system.

[maurob]

acpi.sys is corrupted. can i disable that or do anything to that through bios?

[maurob]

replaced the hd and it didnt work either. upon installing the os again, it hangs on a bunch of files and i have to skip their installation. then when i get to a certain point, it says "acpi.sys corrupted".

[Midknyte]

if you have more than one stick of ram, try them one at a time. if not, swap it out.

i've seen corrupted file errors during installs due to bad ram.