Member Avatar for rogermcnally

Hi - I hope this is in the right forum.

About a week ago I installed XP Pro on top of the home edition. I got lots of hardware conflicts and other problems, so I installed the home edition again. (I know this was idiotic...:sad:...but its done now!

Since then the machine freezes and closes down without any warning. I've been going through the drives, disabling and enabling. I've tried repair - using both my xp disc and my hp recovery disc, but no luck.

I'm sure this is quite a common problem, but I'd like to solve it myself if possible rather than sending it to the repair shop.

Any ideas?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Mix
Member Avatar for digitalocksmith

As for the upgrading of XP I never, ever recommend using the upgrade disk or even the full install disc of Pro and going over the top of 'home' to anyone. This is especially pertinent if the service pack upgrades differ between the two. When asked by friends, co-workers etc who are thinking of going this route, i would say it is a prescription for disaster.
Even though it's a pain to have to reinstall all of the other programs again - in my experience a "clean and lean" install after reformatting, will always work out better and there are far fewer problems in the long run.
One time I was discussing this subject with a co-worker. He flat out didn’t believe it; because he had just recently upgraded using the XP"update" installation disk on his PC and had thus far experienced no problems. Sure enough, about two or three weeks later he said that he told me that he wished he had reformatted instead of upgrading; because he was getting various driver error messages and system crashes that would not go away.

Back up all the data that you can, and do a clean install of Pro. The few days you lose installing your programs again will save you weeks, if not months, of blood, swet and tears down the track.
You will not regret it!
Thats my 2 cents anyway:lol: ..........

Member Avatar for rogermcnally

I did a full reinstall having removed the discs partitions and formating the drive. I used my XP Home disc and I the pc is freezing and closing unexpectedly. I have checked most of the drivers at this stage and this doesn't seem to be the problem. There have been innumerable restarts so I'm beginning to wonder if the problem is disk damage. Thanks for the suggestion above.

Member Avatar for Mix

For testing memory check out Memtest http://www.memtest86.com/

See if you can boot into safemode, and let me know if you can! See if you can boot into safemode, that's saying two things. One, the problem is software / driver related. Two, the problem can be fixed.

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