I wish this was just as simple as the blue death screen....lol, but i've gotten something much worse, and hopefully someone can help me. I have been trying to piece together a pc for my brother, and while I'm not as quick about some of my show off friends, I don't like admitting defeat either.

The main issue I am having is, I've pieced it all together, it has a compaq motherboard that hasn't been accessed since 1998, (jan 1st I believe), and although I am unsure of the model, I've found out through testing that it takes pc133 ram ( i had originally guessed at this since its a very common type, and believe me i've fried many a chip lol), and I have pieced together a heat sink, cant tell what processor because it wont let me access many other screens atm., but On the good note it finally starts up, and what I get is a blue screen after it boots and asks me safe mode, mode w networking, mode with command prompt, or last known good configuration ect screen.

well I have tried every screen, and it gives me a blue screen with a error code saying it cannot recognize the harddrive, and to please reinstall the harddrive or if I have put in a new one re install it to test it to see if it works. well i've done this, and its not working. any ideas on what I could possibly do to fix this issue?

I know it takes caviar haddrives, (i'm sure i spelt that wrong, (err its western digital), and I know its a compaq motherboard because the on screen is compaq at startup. now the reason I am trying to change the harddrive is because the old one only has so many MB, when this one has at least 20 GB....Its a big difference and I know he will thank me for it.

any help would be great, I hope to have this ready for him by later today due to his knee and having surgery, I thought it would make a nice gift as I normally do this kinda stuff as a hobby since I am disabled. any help would be greatly appreciated..........


~Ripping hair~ lol

What OS are you trying to install? XP or Win98/ME?

If it's XP it may need a bios update to support the OS.

What's the full spec of the PC?

ram
cpu
etc....

What's the full BSOD code?
It will look something like this:
0x00000000 (0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Can you press F10 at boot to enter setup?

It boots the normal bios startup screen when I push f3, probably the same thing your saying there, as for the specs in message two, I'll have those for you later this afternoon. but the message I am getting is after I go to try and read the drives, in any mode, safe mode, regular ect, it comes up with the blue error screen, and a dos like (binary) code at the bottom, which I've seen before and fixed, but thought there was a easier way to do it, and have forgotten how to fix it. It gives me a paragraph short and to the point definition basically telling me there is a error, or possibly virus on the drive, not making it readable, and to reinsert the drive if it is new, and try reinstalling it again. it has a previous os on it, and that is windows xp from another pc. I have even tried to install win xp from the cd with the harddrive, but it gives me a general production fault error or something similar to that. any ideas?

I was curious if you can get into the BIOS/Setup. Generally F10 will bring you into the BIOS. If you get into the BIOS, check to see if the hard drive is showing p under Primary/Master.

Sorry to interrupt, but I've had similar problems, and it was because I had a hard drive that had an OS on it that was "preinstalled" by the manufacturer (HP), and it wouldn't let me install another OS on it, access it on any computer besides the one that it was orriginally in. I found out that I coulnd't do to much to the computer, as it was (for lack of a better term) protected, and would only work in an HP machine. The solution was to completely wipe the drive, and then I was able to install the OS. I sold my old HP to a friend who is a computer genius, and he couldn't even get the mobo to work with a different OS on a different drive. IMHO, if he can't get it to work, then it can't be done! He ended up pulling the CPU, and scrapping the mobo.

If that's not the case, it sounds as if the BIOS is probably doing the same thing....trying to load up for a compaq machine, but it's not seeing the compaq parts, so it's not going to work. No clue on how to fix that, as I'm (extremely) limited in my knowledge of the BIOS

Again, sorry to interrupt, I just thought I'd try to help here, as this is very similar to a problem that I've had before.

Hope it helps!

Thank you guys for your help. what I did, because i lost internet connection for a week, (had phone turned off and switched service)., was i had to download the drivers for the motherboard to update them to recognize the newer gigs i suppose. then i installed the empty, formatted harddrive, and i think part of the problem was the bios not being updated, as well as using a burnt copy of xp., because i had used a storebought one after, and it worked just fine. anyhow thanks again, and im sure ill have questions in the future, and if anyone has any i think i know the answer to ill gladly help.