ok, so...cant boot into windows anymore. "Hardware Malfunction...Contact your (whatever)....system has halted"
no error code...just the above
SO...I started the testing process. Had recently purchased a used but known working motherboard
put that in, with just the vid card, master drive, one stick of 512mb ram and processor.
blue screen. same message. tried a different stick of RAM. same
so....I borrow a different stick of ram, known working (pulled from a working system)
same damn message
SO, I go to the shop and buy a power supply and vid card. Try those separately
SAME DAMN MESSAGE!!!!
so...the ONLY thing it can be down to now as far as I can tell is the processor, right?
system POST's fine, with either motherboard, and either 512mb OR 1GB ram...
just curious, but...would a virus do this? I guess I could run a bootup virus scan? but...Ive had Grisoft running since this computer was introduced to the net...
processor, mobo, and ram are original, purchased around the same time (approx 3 years) but I remember before I bought this ram (Crucial brand PC2100) I had some Mushkin PC2100 and got the same damned blue screen but only occasionally. Now it happens ALL the time. Before I would just power cycle and all would be fine usually. got to where I had to do it 2 or 3 times sometimes, and there would be times where it wouldnt restart when I used Windows to do so. would just power off instead. but...when it ran, it ran fine, which tells me the processor should have been ok, no?
Ive tried reinstalling windows, but get the same error..
so...it seems like Ive gone through all the options, to no avail! Im really, really confused....
oh...I even tried a brand new hard drive...borrowed from a friend...was just gonna install windows and see what happened, but couldnt even do that!
god...anyone have ideas?