Help!!

[Kaltagesta]

Ok, so here's the problem. I was sitting down, watching my Ricky Gervais DVD when i get a call from Skullcrush. He says his PC isnt botting up. I ask the standard questions and fast forward two hours, im at his house trying to fix the fucker. Basically, it gets the the Windows XP Home screen, with the lil green bar scrolling across, and then it reboots. It's a Dell.

He wants a fresh start, so we decide to reformat. I go about with the boot disk, format C: and then boom, it gets to 41% of the little pre-format scan and it says 'Insuffient Memory'. Simple, b0rked Dimm, right? Neg. I took out one of his 256's and it still happened. Took the remaining one out and replaced it with the other, same prob. Took a dim out of MY PC and put it in his, same prob.

I try to reformat with his windows CD, but it just freezes on the 'Copying Files' bit of the blue screen, pre-GUI bit. I try to do it another way from the CD and i get that Blue error screen saying it turned it off to stop hardware damage.

So, i'm at a loss. I cant reformat, and i cant fix windows. I tried booting my PC up with his as a slave drive, but when i plug his in, it doesnt recognise either drives, my OS HDD or his. I replace his with my regular slave drive - jumpers in the same position on both - and it works just like it normally does.

So... it sounds like his HDD is buggered. Any other ideas?

[Corrosion]

Originally Posted by Kaltagesta

It's a Dell.

[SDM]

That exact same thing happened to me a while back with a Seagate HD. He's going to be needing a new hard drive.

...well, I can't be certain it was the exact same thing, but it sounds like it, and thats the same error I got about physical damage.