Problems with Xp Pro Installation

Recently i did a fresh install of windows because for whatever reason my install shield became corrupted. After reading around the only way to fix this problem was to reinstall the os. When I attempted to install the os over again I would get various errors which included catroot2 folder corrupted, blank screen when system rebooted after formatting hd, and another long message I do not recall at this point. Eventually it did install after a good 20 different tries and configurations. Now that the os is up and running all my files i had saved on a seperate hd are corrupted and nothing will run properly. Everytime I try to run an application it freezes and crashes....

What is causing windows to act like this?

Is it the os or some hardware problem

Also I just purchased a WDC 500GB hd and a 8800gts 640 vid card...i cant imagine the vid card has anything to do with it and the hd does not get used for the os

I can't say for sure, but I suspect hardware as the problem.

Memory or memory controller is my bet.

What kind of hardware problem.....when I installed the new vid card I had to remove the chipset cooler on the mother board and had a hard time reinstalling it...is it possible if the chipset was scratched or damage that could be the problem

Well, for an A64, the memory controller is on chip, so that wouldn't affect the memory controller. Of course, I'm not certain that it's the memory controller, that was Jon's idea. With most other chipsets, the memory controller is on the north bridge.

I would tend to suspect the main hard drive of being defective. If the OS got borked, it could have screwed up the filesystem on the secondary drive. It's kind of a weird problem though, and I'm just guessing.

When you say you performed a fresh install, you formatted and installed XP to a clean drive? And when you say you attempted to install the OS over again, was this also a clean install after reformatting the partition? And what sorts of "files" do you have saved to another HDD... program files that you previously designated as the installation directory from your original install?

Try zero'ing the drive before install.

I attempted multiple methods...including fresh installs....also I have manages to get windows server 2003 to run smoothly...so im guessing the xp pro cd is bad