PC - Big problem - can you help?

[plantman]

intermittent faults are bain of an IT guys life, if you have everything off i would wipe it first before any hardware fault finding.

if its a dodgy hard drive sector a format could fix it, if its an operating system issue it will fix that too.

if it still does it after a wipe then go for the RAM, check the processor thermal paste and make sure its not dried out ect ect.

formatting it will take a couple of hours from scratch, you will also need to download the lastest drivers for the machine off the Dell website.

if you have the dell disk in the drive start the machine up and it should give you the option "press any key to boot from cd"

if it doesnt you will need to go into the bios and move the cd drive to 1st in the boot priority list.

if you have trouble with the format process you can google it and there is a ton of guides with pictures, but its dead easy.

make sure you delete the hard drive info and do a FULL format, dont do a repair or quick format

 

[Frunkstar]

Huge thanks again Andy/guys.

Just a quick question, re - "make sure you delete the hard drive info" - I do this seperately from the format I presume, IE the full re boot will not do it for me? - sorry to be such an IT spaz, but I will try to retain anything learned through this for future.

 

[plantman]

Just given you the answer via PM but ill post it here too

Boot from the XP disk, where is asks you for a fresh install of XP choose that option, then delete the current partitions, start a new XP installation and do a FULL format, that should clear the drive for the new version