I need help

[-=KA=- Lifter]

I went to start up my computer this afternoon, and it would get stuck on the first screen - the one where it's detecting the drives. It said detecting IDE Drives...
and then it wouldn't do anything. So I restarted my computer a few times, opened up my case, tried to make sure everything was plugged in, and then started it up again.
It got to windows, but for some reason my sound wasn't working at all. I had no idea why, so I restarted again hoping that it would fix itself. So - the next few times windows tried to boot up - a blue screen would flash for a split seond, and my computer would restart. It happens everytime now, but I can start it in safe mode when it asks me to.

I don't really know a whole lot about computers, I would be most grateful if you could help me solve this problem. It's driving me crazy.

I'm running Windows XP
I have a EVGA 7800 GT video card
AMD Athlon 2.2 Ghz
1 Gig RAM
Gigabyte Motherboard
Creative X-fi Xtreme Gamer soundcard

 

[Kahless[Jones]]

Does your computer get past POST now?

 

[-=KA=- Lifter]

It still restarts itself everytime windows is about to boot up.
I can start it in safe mode, but I have no idea what to do from there. The blue screen error says:

An attempt was made to write to read-only memory.

STOP: 0x000000BE (0xF6255562, 0x09256121, 0xF78DA584, 0x0000000B)

 

[GreenMonkey]

Well you can of course attempt to perform a recovery to a few days ago but i really hate those. They pretty much neevr work unless you delete a file - it may seem like they work but a few months later you find out that you need to format <---- my opinion

So anyways, I am reading this and wondering a few things. Was this absolutely out of the blue, there was no new softwar,e no new hardware - and nobody else was using the computer between the day before this happened and when you turned it back on?

The fact that it got stuck in detecting IDE drives (assuming you are using IDE drives) makes me wonder how your hard drives are doing. Do you ever hear any clicky noises comming from your computer?

The fact that you had no sound and then continual restarts on windows start up could indicate a failing drive or just corupted windows installation. However - I'm not about to say format yet. Once in safe mode you could try to scan for viruses. (yes that sounds cliche but my question isnt necessarely about viruses,... as it scans the hard drive it will try to talk to each sector being used by your files and if the hard drive has a sector that is bad, or if the drive it setlf is failing then you should or at least could find that it freezes or restarts before the end of the scan.

Also as always checking for overheating / dust buildup in heatsinks is always a good idea when inside a case. I will wait to see how you report in.

 

[Kahless[Jones]]

One of you CD drives or even you floppy drive(do people still have those?) could have gone bad try unplugging them from teh ide channel and restart if you still have trouble with detecting IDE device it must be your HD

 

[-=KA=- Lifter]

Thanks for the help guys, but I ended up just reinstalling windows. It seems to be working fine now.

 

[Trogdor]

that would work if it starts doing it again tou might have a virus,the same thing happened to my bro.what version of xp is it?

 

[GreenMonkey]

If it happens again - I would lean toward hard drive failure. He said he reinstalled windows - so there is only two ways for a virus to cause the problem - to download it again (either from files saved onto disk or hard drive partition, from a networked comeputer, or even bad luck with the interwebz) or he performed a windows repair instead of a full reinstallation.

If he erased the hard drives in the computer and reinstalled windows - it is unlikely that he "still has a virus". He would have to get it again for that to be true.

Lifter let us know in a month or two if everything is still fine.