Ive been working on a in -laws computer and was wondering if i should reformat
heres the deal:
Th computer wouldnt load the gui it would simply black screen with cursor...
Id also get a Bsod and a win xp checking for bad sectors screen........
this repeated after a supposed (not by me) system recovery repair(non reformat)
i did the same thing and quickly removed all norton anti virus stuff, replaced it with avg
avg found two spywares.
(updated) updated bios, chipset, graphics card drivers, and uninstalled a few needless programs... also intel had by default in bios, set the single sata hard drive to raid configuration... i found a way to go from raid mode to ahci mode without having to reformat/reinstall windows...im using a hard drive- driver that i hope will continue working.. the thing is everything checks out and runs well... so my questions are....
other tests i did
raid promise removal tool (official hp )
memtest86
smart full scan
check disk
1. Should i trust that this recovery is stable? and will continue working...
2. Might the recovery wrote on a good sector this one time and the bad sector might be waiting to hand out bsods?
3. is it still plausible for it to be a power supply?
4. do recovery disks reformat for you and can i install a fresh copy with ahci mode?
specs: Core duo e6300 2 gb ram Hp Pavilion a1640n
any help or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Any updates? How is the PC doing now? Are you still experiencing problems?
Mark H
Thx for asking Mark,
update: All seems to be well, it is said to be working great.
I never knew precisely what was causing the bsod, but
i threw everything i had at it. I've heard about quite a few of xp service pack 3 issues and i cant help but wonder if that is where the problem occurred. I disabled automatic updates through the services.msc so sp3 wont be returning anytime soon. He's a good enough pc user to get the critical updates anyways.