[MrRelish]

Hello all, I am here to ask for help because I am tired of my computer and I am on the edge of buying a new hard drive but people says that I should look deeper...

Here is my problem : I bought a computer 8 month ago. It worked perfectly for 6 month with windows 2000 operating system. I then decided the format my drive and install windows 2k again. I had no problem with it until I decided to format it 2 month ago. I tried to install windows xp but I couldnt. It always said that it couldnt copy a file in the middle of the file copy process. But the cd is not the problem because I tried it with 3 different windows xp cd. I then tried to reinstall windows 2000, but it said the same thing in the middle of installation. Finally, after multiple formating I was lucky and I could get windows xp to install on my computer.

Now the problem is that I can't get any other thing to install on my computer. I couldnt install my graphic card driver, half of windows update, msn messenger, and many many many many many other software. I wanted to play a homeworld 2, couldnt install, freelancer neither, only been able to install starcraft but even this often crash in the middle of something... I even have problem with my internet explorer (Even worst with firefox).

I can tell that there is absolutely no program that work like it should on my computer (Well, I succesfully installed 2 programs...) I just dont understand, that computer is supposed to be almost new!

I am very tired of having no functionnal computer, can somone help me please???

My computer is a Gateway Pentium 4 2.00 GHz, 512 MB of RAM with a WD600BB hard drive.

[cheesewheels99]

mabye its your cd drive

[MrRelish]

it is not because it do the same thing when I download and try to install programs

[cheesewheels99]

hmmm mabye a virus or spware

[MrRelish]

No virus and no spyware because even with internet not connected and just after formating my drive, I still have the same problem.

[philthomas]

Have you got another stick of RAM you can try ?

[mcbee]

I wouldn't rule the CD drive out yet. If you had a faulty install of Windows it may not install programmes properly anyway. Any time I have had a problem installing the operating system (not being able to copy files) it was related to the optical drive. It was one of: faulty drive, faulty cable, incorrect jumper settings on the drives if there was more than one or incorrect fitting of the cable. I think that if you had a problem with the hard drive that should show up at the formatting stage.
Faulty memory also caused problems although they usually resulted in a BSOD.

[cheesewheels99]

sometimes trojens will not get deleted when you format they will evade it try this program ereaser

[MrRelish]

What is the difference between the optical drive and the cd drive?

also, I wont try to reformat now because I might not be able to reinstall any OS... but next time I'll do it, I'll try it.

[mcbee]

An optical drive is either a dvd or cd drive.