Hard Drive Problem

[JMan]

Hi guys, long time no post.

I've got a problem with a computer I built for my friend. First off, here are the specs:

ECS K7S5A
Thunderbird 1.4 Ghz
512 MB SDRAM
40 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM

And so on.

He'd been having trouble lately with Windows XP acting up and things going really slow. He said it may have started when he used AdAware. After a week or two of trouble, he couldn't get into Windows (normal or safe mode) at all. It gave him an error, something about System32.dll.

Now I have the computer, and I'm trying to format it as I couldn't figure out the repair function of XP. I did fixboot in repair, and that seemed successful, but it didn't seem to fix anything. So I deleted his old partition, created a new one, that seemed to work. But as it got to the place where it starts installing Windows files, it threw me out and said error transferring files. I tried it twice and it gave me similar errors both times, though one time it threw me to DOS, while the other time it stayed in Windows setup (not sure if this is significant, probably not).

I really don't know where to go from here, so I'd appreciate any help you can offer.

Thanks a bunch,

JMan

[PreDatoR]

sounds like a power issue with the board... try running the processor at 100mhz FSB and report back... The K7S5A has trouble with PC133. Its fine with PC2100 or DDR 266. go to amdmb.com and u can read about a lot of problems there especially with XP. I've got one running a 1 gig duron 100 FSB and its fine but i'm sure if i toss in a XP and run the ram at 133 it will give me problems.