I'm thinking this is a hardware issue...

[bcw757]

Alright, bought a bulk lot of used computers from a school awhile back. 20 compaq's w/ AMD Athlon 1ghz processor. Surprisingly all but 1 took the factory restore, and booted right up with no problems. But there is one culprit. It takes the factory restore, but when it boots to windows (ME), it will lock down as soon as I click start. (or any desktop item). Then when I try to reboot, it will stay on the ME bootup screen (has done this through 3 consecutive restores)...

?? b/c I put the other 19 computers immediately to use, I have no extra parts to swap out with this one (except for memory) I'm thinking hard drive, but don't really know for sure.. There isn't some kind of dos boot disc out there that will test hard drives is there?

 

[brady]

I would definetly try to repair the install before going to a hardware issue. Once you have re-installed/reformatted and it still doesn't work then we can think of hardware issues.

You don't hear any kind of clicking or scratching while booting do you ?

 

[Chase]

Sounds more like a software issue, although it could be overheating. Do a fresh install of Windows after a format and try that. If that dosn't work, my guess would be that it may be overheating. Just a thought-

::-Chase-::