Error Installing Windows

[Nerwin]

Well I been working on my friends system for sometime. When we ordered all the parts, I installed them and they worked fine, Installed XP, he was happy for a year and then out of no where it stopped working.

So now I have his system and of course Physical First! So I checked all the cables, everything seems to be connected and well seated.

So I begin to set up windows, First I was trying to install XP Pro and I could get all the way to where "copying files" are. It would either stop on shell32.dll or user32.dll. So I thought it might be a cd problem, tried another copy of windows, that was good, no scratches or anything. Still wouldent work.

Even the hard drive was reset, works fine in my external HDD case.

So after that I tried to install Vista, well it only got so far and gave me a fatal error.

So I have no idea. I'm assuming its either the Hard drive or CD drive.

Any ideas?

[puntoMX]

Reseat the memories, take power cable out of the wall-outlet and push the "power-button" first to discharge the PSU and mobo.

Looks like a memory problem.

[Nerwin]

Reseat the memories, take power cable out of the wall-outlet and push the "power-button" first to discharge the PSU and mobo.

Looks like a memory problem.

Alright Tried what you said. It had 2 512mb chips in it (theres 4slots) so I tried them all. I tried them in pairs, switched sides, only tried one on a time and then switched sides. Still did not work

So it got me thinking....

Maybe its the ram itself has gone bad?

so I had an old 256mb DDR400 chip laying around. Put that in it. worked like a charm. So I told him to buy new ram for it. 1024X2 so he will have 2gb.

Sweet.. The thing is, I tried this before, didnt work. but I never thought of trying some other ram.