saibotex said:
can you give more details?
PC Specs, how old is the PC
anyway from my experience if you didnt have enough power the pc wont start up at all, maybe light up a bit then die out.
You did say you got it to boot up to win xp on a 256mb stick then froze. My guess is you dont have enough ram
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Wow, really? Not enough Ram causes system instability? Windows XP can run on 64mb of ram just fine, in-fact that's the minimum requirements. (Why do people spread such FUD?)
Lack of Ram will NOT cause system instability, it will just massively slow everything down as the OS has to resort to using the Page File instead of System Ram. (That's why the Pagefile was invented.)
No, I would hazard a guess that:
1) Your Ram has gone bad.
2) Your motherboard is faulty.
Try keeping with only 1 stick of Ram in the system, swap the sticks around and try swapping them between different memory slots on the motherboard.
At this point you can rule out everything except the Ram and the Motherboard, a computer can start the boot process even when a Hard Drive isn't installed.
Plus you could boot into windows with only 1 stick of Ram, so your Video card is probably fine. (Try taking the video card out and putting it back in to re-seat it in any case, just to be sure.)
Other than that, the system is old, 512/256mb of ram is simply archaic in this day and age, I would hazard a guess that the system is probably Pentium 4/Athlon XP class if it was only running 2x 256mb sticks.
On older systems, I've found that over time the memory doesn't seem to sit well in the memory slots on the motherboard, the PCB over time warps a little, so playing around with the memory configuration may help solve the issue, but I doubt it will be a permanant fix if past experiences are anything to go by.
I would suggest looking at getting a new system...
Heck you could go with an AMD Fusion E350 "Nettop" which would offer superior performance in everyway for only a few hundred bucks, and cut power consumption massively, saving on your electricity bill.
