Hey there Harry,

This is actually starting to look more like memory may have caused part of the fault, the memtest from here is a bootable image. You should run it on one module of memory in the pc at a time and in each of the memory slots. eg. memory 1 in slot 1 then in slot 2, then memory 2 in slot 1 and then slot 2. What this will do is tell us if it is either a particular module of memory or a memory slot failing.

I'll try it out, but if the ram was a problem... wouldn't the PC just be blank? or black?

I did do a memtest 1 day before the system ran into this problem and the ram indivdually didn't freeze the pc and showed 0 errors and 0% coverage as i ran it for about 20-30 mins.

you mentioned earlier " I tried the quick test, which said the HD was okay. As I did the FULL test.. it froze on me.. like it does for when I burn a cd" Maybe it is the cd rom causing the hard drive to playup I assume they are both IDE

P.S when trouble shooting a PC it is best to run minimal hardware. Another thing duz the PC boot from the cd drive if the hard drive isn't pluged in?. Just to see if the cd rom is working it shoud really of boot from the cd when you have selected it in the bios which is making me suspisous.

The DVD ROM is IDE however the HD is SATA. I checked the bios and double checked that 1st boot device was my DVD ROM and 2nd boot device is the HD. That was under boot priority I believe. That's the only thing I changed.

I removed the Sata cable from the HD and I keep on getting.. "Reboot and Select proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot Device"

Now that comes up even if I insert the XP media center cd 1. I'm wondering if the XP disc I have is not a boot disk? When I bought my PC they gave me 2 discs... 1 of 2 and 2 of 2..

"Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.. software included on this recovery cd rom was pre installed on your HD at a factory and may be used for backup and recovery of your system". That's what it says on the disc...

so i'm puzzled now... and if parts are needed, will need to make a decision by tomrw late afternoon, as I will have time to get anything, if needed...

let's not panic! 1 thing that is going to have to work is the booting from the dvd drive which we have had no luck with. You are going to need this to work in either senario to fix the problem. Are u sure it won't boot from the dvd drive. Sometime at post boot the pc might say press any key to boot from cd. Or in post boot screen duz it say to press a ## key to select boot device somtime one of the F# keys.
do you have any other bootable cd's to try XP PRo XP home Win98SE? to see if your cd of windows has a problem.


If we can't get it to boot for the dvd drive we can't really do any thing

hmmm at the moment I don't have any other bootable cd's... my win98SE was borrowed by someone and never returned.. so i have nothing besides the XP MC cd's I got.

Basically, when I add the CD and the HD is connected, it will show a underscore.. and it blinks.. like it's detecting/reading for bootable disc.. and I see the dvdrom light blinking... it does it for a bit.. and then almost ignores it and goes onto the same problem...

BTW. the day before the PC had this issue... I mentioned I heard a CLICK...CLICK.. noise... many few times... i talked about it with another person and they said, your HD is most likly dead? nothing else really would make that CLICK CLICK noise.. and lag the PC for a few secs.. makes me wonder if the internal part of the HD was damaged? and if the HD is... dead... then I assume bootup wouldn't work?