[Hacked2Pieces]

I am having serious computer issues! My desktop has been freezing a lot as of late. As in mouse freezes screen freezes, no task manager, manual restart. Well just as I was about to back it all up tonight. I am using windows media player and firefox and all of the sudden the computer starts to restart itself. Once it reboots it goes to the vaio screen where it freezes. I am actually used to this because it happens whenever I try and restart with my external hd attached. so I hard restart again, disconnect the external, and then it passes the vaio screen goes to the pentuim 4 screen, goes to a black screen with a little cursor that skips down a few bars, i hear the drive whirr up when it should load up to the windows xp loading screen, but then it stops and the screen goes blank. If i try and go into safe mode by pressing f8, it says please select boot device and gives me a choice of :

SM-SONY DVD RW DW-D18A

1ST FLOPPY DRIVE

PM-WDC WD2500BB-98FTA0

none of which do anything. I can't seem to get the normal boot where it asks me for safe mode. Please, help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[jbhardman]

Sounds like 1 of two things (or maybe both):

1. Your windows install is corrupt and you need to reinstall.
2. Your memory is failing and you need new ram.

I would bet it's either one of these or both that is causing your problems...Remember, when in doubt, format and re-install!

[Hacked2Pieces]

ok, i just need to ensure i can back up my data. i have an external, if i can copy my data on there i can re-install. any suggestions?

should i run memtest to check the ram?

[jbhardman]

A good mem test will take a while, but it might be worth it. Download and burn the ISO for the Ubuntu 8.04 install. When you boot with it in, it has a mem test right on the boot page. Run that, but run it for a while.