Here's a wierd one

[kevingrade4]

I'm doing a clean install of XP home on a Dell Inspiron 1200 laptop. I swapped hard drives cause one was toast. Formatted the drive and loaded windows. After driver installation I began to update windows. 1/2 through service pack3 it blue screens and the hard drive is not picked up in bios. Shut down, pull out drive and reinsert and it is fine for another 5-10 minutes. Thinking it's a bad install, I format and reload. No windows update this time - no drivers install - just time. Blue screens and shuts down. No hard drive in bios. Do the unplug/plug thing. Here's the wierd thing: If I boot it in safe mode it doesn't blue screen.

I was thinking controller issue, but safe mode being ok seems to make me think software.

Just to be safe, I reseated memory and flashed the bios but I'm still having issues. Any ideas?

 

[dokk2]

Think you might have to go back to fdisk and dos??
For what it is worth ,,at least the primary partition on any hdd should be done from dos not Win XX?? It has been my experience to notice that for a better running hdd a dos primary seems to work best...

 

[kevingrade4]

Thanks. I never thought of that. I'll try.

 

[leo2kp]

What if your motherboard is dying? Could that be why the other drive was "toast"? Maybe both drives are dead/dying?

 

[kevingrade4]

I'm trying a new drive today. Hmmm. I still can't figure out why it's ok in safe mode.

 

[nickhoff]

The first thing you need to do is watch the blue screen very careful and observe the problem driver(s) Write them down axactly as they appear on the blue creen. Then follow the instructions below:

Click on the Control panel button.
Notice the problem driver when the Blue Screen appears, such as: aspi21.sys or others. Write down this problem driver or drivers if there is more than one driver causing the memory dump.
Put your computer in safe mode.
When Windows restarts open the �Computer� folder.
Open your primary HD drive C:
Open Windows/System32/drivers.
Delete the problem driver(s)
Restart your computer in the normal startup mode.
Access the Control panel.
If no Memory Dump occurs, the problem is solved.

If the above don't work try this:

when rebooted press f2 when in setup scroll down to onboard devices click enter then down to flash cache modual should say enabled turn that off then scroll up to sata operation and choose ata then exit and save and try to reboot.


If both above don't work try this:

To work around this behavior and display devices when you click Show hidden devices:
Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
At a command prompt, type the following command , and then press ENTER:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
Type the following command a command prompt, and then press ENTER:
start devmgmt.msc
Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager.

NOTE: Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Managers before you can see devices that are not connected to the computer.
When you finish troubleshooting, close Device Manager.
Type exit at the command prompt.

Note that when you close the command prompt window, Window clears the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable that you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you click Show hidden devices.

Now the crash could be caused to a driver that is no longer used and on the fresh install it's putting it as the primary, so you need to go through the list and remove all of your old non used drivers.

Hope this helps!

 

[kevingrade4]

You are the MAN!!! That is fantastic advice. Really appreciated!