Computer doesnt get far past the mode selection point

Question

Please bear with me as I am pretty rubbish at hardware - im more of a programmer.

I recently got my old computer out. I remember I had an installation of Win XP which didnt work so I installed XP again on a different partition. I managed to recover the old Win XP installation today. I started up Windows fine, logged on fine, left it for 20 minutes and came back to find it suddenly blue screened. It has done this several times, each time after a different amount of time and with a different message - a real pain since I was trying to generally tidy it up, removing games, copying files onto an external hard drive and such like. I decided, since this kept happening, to simply backup the files and format the entire hard drive.

It was at this point I realised that I had two hard drives in there. One which, I believe, just has the operating system installations and programs on there (as well as the standard My Documents and such like). The other one has all the games, TV recordings, disk images (I back up my disks - I dont copy them illegally, obviously. As a programmer I wouldnt like it if someone else ripped my program, so I dont do that to others on principal...).

I switched my computer off at the wall, waited for the red light on the motherboard to fade, then took the cables out of one hard drive. I started up my computer and this is where it started.

Basically it is getting to the screen where I can choose from Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, Last Known Good Config and Start Normally. I select, well any of these, and it displays a black screen for a few seconds, whirs a bit and then decides to give me a blue screen. It appears to have some generic error on it - something about checking for viruses, removing newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers and ensuring any connected hard drives are properly configured.

I dont know what to do - Ive tried reconnecting the hard drive, disconnected both of them, reconnected both of them, disconnecting the graphics card (just beeped loads of times, so its not as if that wasnt connected properly), checking all connections and that the RAM was in the right place.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe, in moving things about and checking connections and alike, I managed to corrupt the RAM. Could this cause the error? What else could cause this error?

PS the errors were BAD_POOL_CALLER and PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. I think the last one was a generic one or simply jibberish (to me).

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Richard

Answer 1

Well I found the answer... I simply loaded the fail-safe defaults in Setup. It loads fine now. Would love to know what caused it.

I think the ram has been going for a while now so I am going to buy some more soon. I will rate both of you up since thats probably the solution to most of the issues.

Regards,

Richard

Answer 2

It could be a RAM problem. Boot up Memtest86+ and run it for at least 7-10 passes, preferably overnight to rule out RAM issues.

Answer 3

I can tell you immediately that a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA BSOD points right at the RAM, use memtest (http://www.memtest.org) to make sure there aren't any problems with the RAM.

Also if you have more than one stick of RAM in the motherboard, take them out so your just left with one, run installation etc. just to run out the culprit.

Also if you just want your documents etc. off the old drive I would recommend using a LiveCD, namely Ubuntu, just burn it on a CD and then boot into the live environment and copy what you need.