On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 00:35:36 -0000, "Paul Harris"
wrote:

Hi. I have been having tremendous trouble with my computer recently. It all
started around Christmas time. I used my computer on Christmas Eve, switched
it off and didn't come back to it again until Boxing day, only to discover
that it would not start at all. After a bit of experimentation, I discovered
the power supply had packed up for no apparent reason (had it less than a
year and it's plugged in to a surge protector.)
I put in a 300w PSU (the previous one was 400w) temporarily but discovered
that I was having new problems with my computer randomly restarting every so
often, but I put this down to the lower wattage PSU.
I decided to reinstall Win2K anyway and so, for a number of reasons, put the
hard drive in a different computer and formatted it and installed W2K and it
all worked fine. Until, that is, I put the hard drive back in the original
computer (with new shiny 550w PSU) and it refused to boot. Kept getting a
BSOD saying innacessible boot device etc. etc. So, I tried reinstalling W2K
again. It gets as far as formatting the hard drive but as soon as it starts
to install windows I get a BSOD saying something about a "stop error" and
"if this is the first time you have seen this message reboot and try again
etc. etc."

Basically, I'm pretty much out of ideas. I don't think it can be the hard
drive because it worked in the other computer but then I don't see how it
can be the motherboard either. Any suggestions?

Oh and if it helps here is my hardwa

Athlon XP 2400+
1Gb DDR RAM
Epox EP-8RDAN motherboard
80GB Maxtor Hard drive


You shouldn't have done the install on a swap drive.
I've found that win2k doesn't like to install over a previous install.
You need to boot from the win2k boot disks and reformat and reinstall
on a clean disc.
At least that's what I do.
Win2k tends to be intuitive during install and will install many of
the required hardware drivers for mobo and other devices from it's
driver files during install.
At least that's what I do.