I will start off by saying that this is a doosy of a problem and whoever can solve is it the man in my book (or the woman ?). Sorry for being long winded. I want a proper diagnosis.

This is a brand new computer. All parts were ordered online. When I received the parts I put them together and everything seemed to work fine. I went in load windows xp professional and while it was initializing I got the blue screen of death. I was quite mad so I restarted it and then it installed. I did have 2 files for service pack 2 I believe that were missing from the CD that should be there so the CD is defective but I don’t think that that is the problem. So I got to the desktop and decided to install some drivers. I was noticing that the computer was running really slow. While I was in device manager and scrolling up and down it was taking time to load. My system was only recognizing 512 of my RAM. I stuck some driver CDs in and all of a sudden the CD-ROM doesn’t work… so I run add hardware and it finds the CD-ROM but it still doesn’t work. I decide that maybe restarting would be a good idea. So I restart it and it doesn’t go any further than the screen that comes up every boot saying Platinum (MOBO) and also “Press <Tab> to switch to POST or <DEL> to run BIOS Setup.” It is frozen so neither of those buttons works. I have another xp CD that I am certain works but I can’t get past this screen to do anything. I can’t even boot to a floppy to fdisk the current windows install. I have tried hitting the CMOS reset button and pulling out the CMOS battery for a while but those didn’t change anything. I guess there is nothing that I can do other than wait for one of you guys to maybe have a resolution to the problem because I can’t even boot to floppy because it doesn’t go past the MOBO screen. I was thinking that the only way I could have all of these problems was because of the MOBO. So I am pretty sure it is a MOBO problem. Can anyone confirm or come up with a different problem?

I am very sorry about the long windedness but it was necessary. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks guys.

I would remove everything except 1 stick of RAM & Video Card & see what happens.

sounds like xp has a prob...if you have a second hdd (hdd2) (size doesnt matter), install xp on that with the one that works...shut down pc....attach original hdd and boot from hdd2.....you should then be able to format the original hdd and reinstall xp

should work....IF its xp causing problems

btw, to reset the bios it takes HOURS to discharge but an alternative is that there SHOULD be some reset jumpers on your mobo

hope this post is some help to you

russ

As jephree said, remove all unnecessary components, and power on with just one memory stick and grpahics card connected. Post back the results.

By hitting the CMOS reset button, do you mean the jumper on the mainboard ?