Scott,
everything you've posted so far points to hardware malfunction. I can safely claim that this has nothing to do with software, and no virus scanning or cleanup sw will help here. Now, the question is, do you want to diagnose this, or give up and get a new everything? here is the list of likely culprits:
- memory (could cause every single one of these issues)
- motherboard (same)
- floppy (not related to anything else other than you trying to copy file from it)
- DVD drive (related to installation and other failures you've seen)
- CPU (not likely)
- cables (not likely given the distributed nature of reported errors)
Now, to successfully diagnose and eliminate elements, you'll need to have some spare parts. It would be good to have an extra memory stick. Do you have one? How many sticks does your computer have right now? If more than one, you could try them one by one, alone... they all may be bad so this won't help, but you may get lucky.
If you still have windows installed, booting to safe mode with both floppy and dvd drive disconnected would eliminate those two as culprits.
Once you eliminate DVD, you can proceed with diagnosing memory. There must be a memory test written for your motherboard - you could find one and download it. Those tests typically are burned on a DVD and then run on reboot without any OS.
Running this would eliminate windows from the picture, albeit you may run into the same issue setup caused. At least that would narrow your search down to motherboard/memory combo.
From here, you may get a memory stick at your local store, might get a cheap one just for testing, and see if it is memory or motherboard.
As I said, this will result in you buying something new. The only question is, as I asked, do you want to spend time figuring out what it is, or just buy a new mobo/memory and start building from there.
Good luck with it. Feel free to ask any questions. I have a 'formal' training in this cr*p. |
