I have a friend's laptop that her son did some serious pRon surfing and fudged it up good. I would not boot at all, so I hooked it to my computer and backed up the info. Then I formatted the HD. Now I am trying to reinstall Windows XP from her Gateway recovery disk but I keep getting BSOD's. USB address error (I will try again later to get the exact error).

So, I tried with my XP disk and it starts loading and them reboots. So, I tried another (legal version) of XP and it gets to a certain point and also BSOD's but with no particular error.

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

Looks like a misconfig in the BIOS. Try reseting everything to default settings. Similar thing happened to me a while ago, I tried reinstalling the OS and it halted with BSOD's until I got into BIOS and changed a few things, then everything installed normally.

Good call. That sounds like a good place to start.

Thanks.

My pleasure man, you should also try installing it from a USB in case Cd-Rom doesn't work normally.

I know it's a laptop and may be a pain in the ass however, you might also want to check the ram. Sometimes, during installs, ram addresses not normally accessed are and if those addresses are flaky, well, BSOSs. Happened to me a while back. If you have a dos disc also try to format the MBF. Good luck.

Hey BURNER! why do you want to reformat me????

I think Mr. Burner meant the MBR aka Master Boot Record.

Try a bootdisk

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Boot from a CD or USB fob...format the whole disk...if the recovery thing didnt work the first time around...gives the owner some more disk space.

install avast and show him how to do a boot time scan.

Jeez Louise. Did I really write that drivel? Thanks Ray for correcting my mistake. Sorry but I have the flu and working outside for 14 hours hasn't done it any good whatsoever. And Mr. MBF, I would never want to reformat you ever. You are one of a kind and a really good kind to boot. LOL. Little joke there. Very little. Arrgghh. Back to bed, I ain't feeling so shit hot. Sorry for the confusion y'all. My mistake.

Hey Burner, no problem. It takes a hell of a guy to work outside with the flu and still reach out and help someone with a problem. I'm just getting over a bad cold or flu thing myself. Hope you feel better soon Bart.....MBR err MBF

Thank-you Ray. Your graciousness and well wishes are always greatly appreciated, sir. <Doffs hat in Ray's general direction.>

Is it BSOD'ing at a specific place in the install? Then yeah - go with the format of the drive (bummer, he lost all his pr0n... oh well... that'll teach him).

Or is it something that seems to be a timing thing? If so, I'd search for an IPB of the machine, pull it apart, vacuum/blow out the dust (and whatever other funk you find in there), reseat everything, then see what happens.

Hey - those things get loaded up with stuff as well... but it's worse on them because there's less space inside. That's how I got my Dell 600M for $100 when the street price was still over $1400 - the previous owner was a very unclean individual, and after sucking about a half pound of dust, cigarette ashes, and dog hair, it ran like a champ.

before you do all that crap, try Spinrite. It's saved my system many times, including several BSOD on boot instances.

PM me if you need a copy.

PM sent.

I have tried different cd roms, moved the memory around...and a few other deals.

I either get USBport.sys, NTFS.sys or pagefile errors.

I think it is going back to the owner...I give up.

sorry, I was asleep.

I had an ntfs.sys error that was fixed with spinrite.

I suggest using option 4 instead of option 2, when you boot into spinrite. It'll take a while but I can just about guarantee it'll save the system.

Take the file I sent you, open it on a good system, and follow instructions to make bootable media. Then reboot the problem system on that media, and follow prompts.

I havent seen a brand and model on the lappy? Unless I missed it.

It's a Gateway MX6421.

any news?

I will get to try it it this weekend and report back.

"Before you try any of that crap?!" Please.

Let me offer some advice that is completely, and utterly infallible: "Hardware issues are not Operating System dependent."

If you've tried several versions of Windows and it blows up in the same place, this is not a problem with the OS that some application or utility is going to magically fix.

- If that machine is having issues with cooling, it's not going to run very long - crack it open for a look-see and possible cleaning.
- If the RAM is bad, moving it around won't likely help things... so pull one SODIMM, then swap it for the other after noting results - if the results change, you have bad RAM.
- The optical drive can be going bad, and you'll get bad loads - try making a bootable thumb-drive and see what happens.
- If the hard drive has a bad sector and can't lock it out, you'll keep getting errors in the same place during the installation - try a new hard drive.

I think we all know what happens when Windows crashes at inopportune moments - errors.

I'm not sayin'.... I'm just sayin'....

You can always try the big hammer too

That is what I am talking about!!!

I got tired of her bitching, so I am sending it back to her and she can deal with it.

so we should just smash it and get a brand new one! like apples!

Some folks just don't at all grasp the concept of humility, graciousness or gratitude. It's their karma. Too bad they make other people's lives more difficult. Should be a remote island where we can dump all these ingrates. Let them f*ck with each other for a change and leave the nice folks to themselves.