Stumped while troubleshooting for a friend

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Matasata

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My buddy brought over a Sony Viao PCV-RX851 desktop for me to look at. He said it would not boot for a week except for one random time. He tried to use the recovery CD's and they would give an error and not install.

Now I have it. I am thinking the HD is dead, but I want to be sure. I will list some of the symptoms I have found.

1. This just seems odd. I get this when I try a generic windows XP cd. It appears right above the press any key to boot from CD
Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM :
No Emulation

2. Sometimes on booting of the recovery CD it gives a...
STOP: c00021a {Fatal System Error}
The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of oxc0000005 (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down.

3. Recovery CD boot error #2... <sigh its long>
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to be sure you have adequate disk space... blablablabla

Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0xc0000005,0xF77484CE,0xF7C5F0B0,0xF7C55EDB0)

*** acpi.sys - Address F77484CE base at F7748000, DateStamp 3b7d8550

hmm.. well it seem sthat now those are the only 3 things I can get it to do. I got it to reformat the drive once through a windows CD but it had an error on installation. It also used to boot the recovery CD then give some kind of immage error.

Anyway thanks for taking the time andfor any help :)
 
Well, It looks like it isn't his HD that is bad, Well it could be part of the problem, but when you can't even boot off a disk there are other problems.
Im thinking bad PSU, bad mobo, bad RAM, bad CD-ROM. If there are 2 sticks of RAM, take one out and try with just one of them in.

I suggest clearing the CMOS. also.

Do the RAM thing First then repost.
 
make sure the IDE cables are all in firmly and none are slightly loose.. but if that's not the case check the ram.
 
Ok, the computer has only one piece of ram. I am looking for another atm. It has a DVD and a CD/RW drive. It was booting on the DVD so I unpluged it so it would boot off the CD/RW. Here is what happened.

First boot it still displayed the "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM :No Emulation", but it loaded the recovery software. After loading it acted as before. It would start partitoning the drive, but after starting the drive restore it would kick out an error "Image Corrupted". After I clicked OK it says the recovery process is incomplete and rebooted loading the recovery software again.


Next I tried to boot off an OEM windows XP home CD. Everything loads as normal starting out. It allowed me to reformat the drive. After reformating, windows checked the drives and the blue screen poped up.

PFN_LIST_CORRUPT

STOP: 0x0000004E (0x0000008F, 0x00008327, 0x00008337, 0x00000000)

I guess this means the CD is not messed up. Does this mean problem is the MB or memory?(if you can tell from this) Really hope its not the MB because that will mean a new case OS etc. Wonder why cramming computers in a bloody sardine can seems like a good idea.... Shuttle PC users accepted of course. :eek:
 
Its either Bad mobo, bad HD, or bad memory at this point.

See if you can find some spare memory and try that.

Or move the current memory Stick to a Different DIMM slot.
 
Well, timidly I placed one of my 512 MB chips from my browsing computer into the test box. So far no errors and it is about 1/2 done with the recovery. It appears the memory is the problem.

If I may, what would cause a mem chip to go bad all of a sudden?

It is Nanya memory
NT512D64S8HAAG-7K
512MB DDR-266MHz-CL2
PC2100U-20330
 
you are braver than I, putting your good 512 into that pc. lol

you never know what may have caused the problem...maybe the slot!!!
 
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