Not sure where to post this so I will post it here, I need help. I have tried everything I can think of. let me start of with what happened. I have an old pc, never had alot of issues with it, pc froze so I reset it no big. tried to boot, find out it says I need to repair my windows instillation, so I put in my windows cd, try to format the drive, no problem, I install windows, now it says I have 2 instiallations when I boot, couldnt get the other install to work, tried to nuke the drive with ultimate boot cd, tried deriks boot and nuke, I get a decompression crc error, I try any other program on ther, I get the same problem, tried parted magic, locks up and I get flashing scroll and caps lock, try running Ubuntu live cd, same thing happens, even tried taking out the bios battery and letting it sit for a while, any help would be appreciated as I am bout to pull my hair out in frustration. Not sure what else to do.

Hi,

It seems you have the boot disk did you try to check the hard drive and memory with your disk to see if they are ok.

well yea I tried checking the disk, doesnt seem to be anything wrong physically. I am making a LiveXP CD and gonna try it

Fist of all make sure your burning any .iso discs at slowest speed possible (faster you burn them more likely there are to be errors), try burning on different computer (could be writers on its way out) or maybe even try a different brand of writable cd (some brands are crap asda own brand in UK for eg), hirens has mini xp mode built into it, dariks (dban) not running would suggest its the actual disc not being read properly either because of it being burnt too fast or on a writer past its best, or the cd installed isnt reading it (see if you can swap out the optical drive, dban can run with errors if hdd is bad but to not run at all isnt normal), when your sure the discs and the drive reading it are alright then try testing the hard drive for errors or re try installing os

another possible cause is bad ram so either use boot disc (ubcd or hirens to run memtest, or swap ram or one stick at a time if you can do it)

ok I will try that, but I dont think the burning is gonna matter, I am using SARDU and making a bootable USB, just finished making it actually, and going to run memtest and such, I will keep you updated.