XP - crashing then new install crashing as well

[GladysPym]

Hi.

XP home was crashing - had a big system hang then gradually deteriorated - no new drivers/hardware/software to blame, it just did.
Installed hd into another machine as slave, stripped off all useful data, and reformatted.
Reinstalled into original machine, booted from cd, and started install of XPpro.
There were problems; kept not recognising dll copies from i386 on the cd, and I had to copy this to another disc and keep swapping between d(the cd) and e(cd/dvd reader) to load all the various files.
Then blue screens which MS says are droiver problems, but as I say I can't find out what driver trouble I've got. Removed the sound card.
One possibility is RAM, but how do I check this when my PC won't load.
Tearing my hair out, here.

Help?

 

[temporello]

I had similar problems: during the install some files couldn't be copied properly on a brand new machine.
It turned out that the memory frequency wasn't set correctly in BIOS.
Anyway your problem sounds like faulty memory as well.
Download Memtest86 (it's a stand-alone software so it doesn't need anything installed on your machine) and check your memory modules.
Good luck!

 

[GladysPym]

RESULT!

Thanx for this - that was the right answer.

All OK now, x x x