Blue screen error when loading XP

Just a few things to check, only because you have not mentioned them. Have you run a diagnostic on the hard drive? If you have two CD/DVD drives, are you trying to boot with the XP disc in the top drive? Are you starting with an unpartitioned drive or deleting the existing partition before you begin the installation process? You may want to refer to Denny's Windows XP Reinstallation Guide.

Yes, we are currently having the same problem.  We have a Dell 8400.  They have replaced the mother board, ram, video card and hard drive.  Nothing is working.  They said they will have the Escalation Team call immediately.  That was Saturday.  No call.  I called yesterday and left messages.  Finally called the support phone again, got the same promise.  Today, I have talked to three more people in India.  Again, I have a promise of a call from the escalation team.  DO THEY REALLY EXIST!!!!

Sorry, this is not much help for you, but at least I have this forum to vent on.  That was a number of hoops to jump through as it was.  Who keeps their customer number or order number handy.  At least, I got that from our friendly help desk in India. 

I'll let you know if I ever get this resolved.

I blew air into the CD drive, replaced the battery, disconnected the floppy drive and wiggled all connecting cables and finally got the program to load completely (or so I thought). But now it splash screens windows xp and then the machine shuts down and I get a blue screen error

Please clarify for me if you mean it's booting off the XP CD and crashing. Or do you mean it's booting from the new hard drive and crashing? If from XP CD, you may have to unplug PC and (1) clear NVRAM by removing the battery from the mobo and holding the power ON/OFF button in for ~15 sec. That will force the system to recognize the new hard drive during next boot. Now replace the battery and restart, immediately pressing F2 to enter BIOS setup.

(2)In BIOS setup, change hard drive controller setting to "RAID Autodetect/ATA", and then change the boot sequence to put your CD drive first on the list. Now insert XP CD in the optical drive and close. Then save the changes to BIOS and exit setup. It should boot from the XP CD and allow you to format HD and do clean XP install. If that fails, try same sequence but put XP CD in the the other optical drive, if you have 2 of them.

If you can install XP, make sure you go back into BIOS setup at some point after the install and change the boot sequence back to hard drive first, assuming that's what you want.

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 08-22-200607:23 PM

Thanks for your reply.  You wrote:

Have you run a . diagnostic on the hard drive? If you have two CD/DVD drives, are you trying to boot with the XP disc in the top drive? Are you starting with an unpartitioned drive or deleting the existing partition before you begin the installation process? You may want to refer to Denny's Windows XP Reinstallation Guide

I have only one CD drive installed, and I have all unpartitioned space. (I deleted the existing partition before installing the program)

I did just run a full diagnostic on the HD... it passed. I did the Dell diagnostic CD also last night, and tried to run it on all components of the system.  But the program quit when it reached a section that tests the memory.  The error message said: Abnormal program termination: memory protection fault  CS: EIP: 012ch: 0000000D1hcs

 When I "hit any key to continue", I got back to the diagnostic menu page and tried it again. This time, it got half way through loading the diagnostic program when I got a blue background with a red screen stating

Initializing DellSys module

Status: fail   Status code: DOS DDG-D Unknown 000 002

Device: unknown  Test: unknown

Release: 1073   Module: DellSys

Msg:  System_Error  Unable to allocate memory for reserved buffer. 

Dell technician stated that she thought I should buy a new memory component.  We tried taking it out and re-seating it in the mother board... but the same thing happened.  I guess now I am looking to buy more memory RAM.

 

Please clarify for me if you mean it's booting off the XP CD and crashing. Or do you mean it's booting from the new hard drive and crashing?

It is crashing when I boot from the hard drive...

I tried the NVRAM clear...hoping that would work.  It seems that the new hard drive is recognized and tests pass when diagnostics are run.  It still crashes after the black windows splash screen

I am going to try this step:  (thank you) 

(2)In BIOS setup, change hard drive controller setting to "RAID Autodetect/ATA", and then change the boot sequence to put your CD drive first on the list. Now insert XP CD in the optical drive and close. Then save the changes to BIOS and exit setup. It should boot from the XP CD and allow you to format HD and do clean XP install. If that fails, try same sequence but put XP CD in the the other optical drive, if you have 2 of them.

If you can install XP, make sure you go back into BIOS setup at some point after the install and change the boot sequence back to hard drive first, assuming that's what you want.

I'll let you know how it goes.  Thanks for your help!

If you have bad RAM, there's no point in going further until that's resolved. Try removing the RAM module from the 2nd slot and see if the system works without crashing. If not, swap modules. If that's ok, you've found the problem. If it won't work with either module by itself, then either they're both defective and/or the motherboard has failed. :(

Ron

Hi Ron,

I  only have one RAM module... When I get the new one (256) I'll give it a try.  Thanks for your assistance. 

I'll keep you posted if I get her up on line again.

Lee

Oh, by the way, Ron,

I wasn't able to change the hard drive configuation to your prescribed setting in BIOS. It was not a choice in my version of BIOS.

After installing new RAM, I was finally able to load my orginal windows xp cd.  Hallelujah.  The system works well now, and I was able to hook up to the internet for the first time in weeks.  Thank you all for your help!:womanvery-happy:

:)