XP wont go past boot scree!

[nihil]

AFAIK, Windows XP Media Center is just regular XP with a few bells and whistles.

On the CD there should be an I386 folder, this should contain Winnt32.exe. That is what you want.

The command Winnt32.exe /cmdcons should load the recovery console into Windows startup.OR:

If you boot from the CD, get to the "Welcome to setup" screen and hit the F10 key or enter R.

I've tried to boot it in safe mode and use the command prompt, but of course it will not dump because the volume is being used.

I am not sure what you mean by that...................can you get into safe mode and the command prompt, or into safe mode and not the command prompt?

Have you cleaned and reseated everything and blown all the lint out of it?

You might try this:

1. Remove all peripheral devices that are not needed such as printers, cameras, speakers, etc.
2. Boot into safe mode and edit your startup to exclude AV, firewall, automatic updates and any other non-essential services and applications.
3. In device manager, remove the modem.
4. Reboot into normal mode.
5. Windows should detect the modem, so reinstall it.

Let me know what happens.

[TheRouter]

Well I found that it was a defective memory chip. What bothers me though, being a defective memory chip, shouldnt it of told me in the post boot that the system was not running the amount of memory that it was before. I say this becasue, when you remove a memory chip, then boot the system, it will run a memory test. The computer never did run a memory test, nor did it give me any indication that the chip was failing. It took me havinging to remove it and place it in a different computer system before I was givin any kind of information on it. Once I placed the chip in my main system, it recognized the chip, but did not add any more memory to it. So I took a working chip out of the big system and placed it in the XP MC system and low and behold it works just fine.

I had made sure everything was very clean and such, and used a can of compressed air to blow it out. (Wanst very dirty anyway, i dont smoke or anything, and it is in a static free enviroment, with no carpet and such.)

Strange fix but it worked, just put me out 56 dollars!

TheRouter

[morganlefay]

well XP is memory intense...much more so then a BIOS check.

AFAIK...all the BIOS does is count it...doenst really run anything in it...unlike XP...where it runs pretty much all in memory

MLF

[nihil]

Hmmm, It is hard to predict what will happen when RAM chips become defective. If they actually "die", then you can expect to be told, just as if you add or remove them, but malfunctions are frequently undetected unless you run a memory test.

I would guess that you had "quick boot" enabled in the BIOS so it did not do a RAM check. It saw that the card was still there and moved on. It did not detect any physical change, so it did not run the test you mention.

If the system detects a memory problem you generally hear it from the BIOS "beeps" but if you don't have an internal speaker you won't hear this. Also, your BIOS would need to be set to do a memory test on bootup.

That is one of the reasons I never enable "quick boot"