Kristy, are ya there? I can try to help you walk through a reinstall. Now, is it a Dell? Or something else? If it is a dell (recent - within the last couple years) there is a symatec partition that can be restored back to factory delivery state. But I won't know until I talk to you. Sorry, I was asleep when you called last nite. So sorry. (Cold medicine). Give me a call, and we'll see if we can either walk you through a reinstall, or get you to a place where you can start to run a virus cleaner. If it is that bad for this particular problem, you may want to wipe and reinstall. I'm hoping you can just do a system restore back to factory specs. We can also see if we can fix your system files if you don't have the disks.

Zep, Memtest wouldn't run. It said to use multiple copies of it I think because of the amount of Ram I have 2 GB. Son is not near enough to borrow ram from to test. I am located in middle of FL , son is down in Key West, is a 5-6 hour drive to drive it. The computer is one my son and I built at Christmas last year. It is all different pieces. No brand names. Motherboard is EliteGroup GeForce 6100PM-M2, Sound is Diamond sound card, Video Card is a EVGA Processor is a AMD 2 Dual Core. Network adapter is integrated into the motherboard. I can download the SP2 and burn it to a CD but all the other drivers are on the CD's that I used to install them when this computer was built. I can install the new hard drive this coming weekend and install every thing again and start fresh with everything at a beginning restore point.Then if the BSOD keeps happening I can restore back to the default restore point.

I stand corrected after looking around here is what I found my point was it is a different type of error, but your right still called a blue screen: The blue screen of death frequently occurs in Microsoft's home desktop operating systems Windows 95, 98, and Me. Here it is usually less serious, but much more common. In these operating systems, the BSOD is the main way for virtual device drivers to report errors to the user. It is internally referred to by the name of "_VWIN32_FaultPopup". A Windows 9x/Me BSOD gives the user the option either to restart or continue. However, VxDs do not display BSODs frivolously  they usually indicate a problem which cannot be fixed without restarting the computer, and hence after a BSOD is displayed the system is usually unstable or unresponsive. Two of the most common reasons for BSODs are: Problems that occur with incompatible versions of DLLs. This cause is sometimes referred to as DLL hell. Windows loads these DLLs into memory when they are needed by application programs; if versions are changed, the next time an application loads the DLL it may be different from what the application expects. These incompatibilities increase over time as more new software is installed, and is one of the main reasons why a freshly-installed copy of Windows is more stable than an "old" one. Faulty or poorly written device drivers, hardware incompatibilities, or damaged hardware may also cause a BSOD. If you have just installed a new piece of hardware, updated a driver, or installed an Operating System update shortly before you see the BSOD, be sure to investigate these causes also. In Windows 95 and 98, a BSOD occurred when the system attempted to access the file "c:\con\con" on the hard drive. This was often inserted on websites to crash users' machines. Microsoft has released a patch for this.[4] The BSOD can appear if a user ejects a removable medium while it is being read on 9x/ME. This is particularly common while using Microsoft Office: if a user simply wants to view a document, he might eject a floppy disk before exiting the program. Since Microsoft Office always creates a temporary file in the same directory, it will trigger a BSOD upon exiting because it will attempt to delete the file on the disk that is no longer in the drive. This type of blue screen is no longer seen in Windows NT, 2000, and XP. In the case of these less serious software errors, the program may still crash, but it will not take down the entire operating system with it due to better memory management and decreased legacy support. In these systems, the "true" BSOD is seen only in cases where the entire operating system crashes.

This did not work. I booted from the XP disk, got the first couple of screens including license agreement, but it will not let me do the repair. Here is the message: "The partition is either too full, damaged, not formatted, or formatted with an incompatible file system. To continue installing Windows, Setup must format this partition." C:Partition (Unknown) 131072MB (131071MB free)on 131068MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi (MBR) Caution: Formatting will delete any files on the partition." So I backed out, and now cannot boot into Windows at all. I have an Acronis boot disk, and it booted from that, but when I chose Windows, all I got was a black screen with a flashing cursor. I also had a boot disk from AVG, but it would not work at all. This XP disk says on the front Unlicensed Software, but I really don't think I can use it for a clean install, because on the sleeve is a Product Key, and a notation to use this every time you install this software. Of course, my daughter installed it on her PC, so no go there if I understand correctly. Now it appears my only hope is to use the recovery disks I made long ago. I won't be doing anything else tonight as I'm just too tired for that. Thank goodness I have another computer. Now I'm not sure if I'll be able to do the type of recovery where I don't lose my files, or if I'll have to do the full job. My HP manual explains both of those in detail. All I get on boot is the HP screen, and then it just goes black with the flashing white cursor.