System Shuts Down during Bootup ?

Ok, I've got a laptop here that has me completely baffled. It's an older Sony Vaio PCG-F270, 333Mhz, 192MB Ram.

I recently bought it and soon found out it had a HD that was going bad. It had a 6.4GB HD that was partitioned off into (2) Partitions. I discovered the smaller one had bad sectors.

The 6.4GB had Win98SE on it apparently running ok. Booted up fine. Didn't run it long enough to really test it.

The Shutdown problem began right after I tried to upgraded it to XP Pro. The install went ok, but when booting up it would shutdown right after the XP splash screen appeared.

I figured the HD was toast at this point and replaced it with a known good 4GB HD.

Now, I'm having the SAME Shutdown issue with the OTHER HD.

At this point, I'm baffled!!

Not sure what to check next.

Where do I go from here ?

TIA!

 

And you say the computer booted up fine with Win98SE?

I don't know what to tell you... I mean the computer has the recommended hardware to run XP and if it booted up Win98SE fine then I don't see why it wouldn't work with XP.

 

Booted up fine with 98SE - yes.

Installed XP just fine as well.

The laptop meets all the XP requirements as well.

I'm wondering if the 2.5MB Video Ram has anything to do with it ??

I'm going to test the RAM modules as well right now.

I now it's a SLOW system, but I only need it to do PowerPoint presentations and surf the net.

I'm not sure if this is Hardware or Software related at this point.

 

Did you say XP on a 4GB HDD? That doesn't give it much room to move.

Will it boot in safe mode? (Press F8 when Windows starts to load). With 192MB of RAM, XP is going to have to put some of itself into virtual memory in order to get running and if there's not enough space on the HDD for the swap file then .....

You might possible succeed using a stripped down XP installation created using nLite.

John

 

I thought I must have read it wrong, but looks as if you're seeing the same thing as me.

 

Yes, a 4GB. I actually pulled the HD from another laptop. It was running XP and Office XP just fine. Not much else on the HD though.

I'm getting close to just canning this laptop for parts...

 

I think its time to get a new NB!

 

Could be a prick of a new virus thats been floating round. Its basically infected half my UNI. It speads though cd's, memory sticks, file transfers as far as I can tell so if you have done any of that you may have it.

Basically what it does is change the userinit value in your registry to load itself instead of teh windows defult. the userinit is teh 1st thing windows runs when it logs in teh defult windows one dows things such as strart explorer and run startup programs. The virus one on teh other hand simply runs teh logoff or shutdown command :s. Its highly annoying and im yet to find a way to remove it on XP. Only worked out how to get rid of it in vista so far.

 

I decided to sell it for parts and/or repair.

Thanks for the input!