Booting a Windows 7 DVD

Have you checked the capacitors yet? You know how to tell if they're bulging or still look okay, right?
http://www.thenakedpc.com/dan/Bulgin...s/close-up.jpg
Basically, a good one should be flat on top. If it's bulging outward, it's toast. I see this happen pretty often with older PCs, so just checking.

As for setting up a dual boot, you're gonna have to wipe the WHOLE drive. Once you hit this screen:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/images/comp...stall_here.png
you'll see all your partitions listed—probably just a C: and a D: drive for you.
Pick the C: partition, hit the 'D' key to delete it, and I think you just confirm it by hitting 'L' or whatever the prompt says.
Then just do the exact same thing for the D: partition or whatever else is sitting there.
You'll know you're done when the only thing left on the list is Unpartitioned space, which should be about 80GB since that's the size of your HDD.
After that, just hit enter and create a new partition from that space. Set it to the max size and let it format to NTFS. Whatever you do, don't check the "Quick Format" box; let it run the full format. It takes a bit longer, but it might actually catch some bad sectors and move them around.

I went ahead and wiped the partitions, formatted everything, and cleared the slate entirely. I performed a fresh installation, which seemed to go off without a single hitch—though it did prompt me for some domain settings, which I simply bypassed by hitting "skip." Everything proceeded normally until the system rebooted and began loading Windows XP. That’s when things took a turn for the worse; the monitor just cuts out completely. I tried removing the CD to see if that would push the process forward, but just as it reaches the point where the desktop should finally load, the screen goes black again. It just sits there, unresponsive, glowing with that dull orange light as if it’s stuck in standby mode.

I've got a bad feeling about my hard drive.

I have this nagging feeling that I’ve stepped into a massive mess here, but honestly, it feels like no matter what I attempt on my PC, there’s always some new catastrophe waiting around the corner...
I am somewhat unsure if it would be wise to try running a diagnostic using Hiren's BootCD to see what's actually going on.
I suppose I am dealing with an old hard drive... specifically, it gets to a point where the system prompts me regarding the screen resolution; I click yes, and then it asks if I can read the text clearly on the display. I can see everything just fine, but for some reason, I find myself unable to click "OK." I end up hitting cancel, and then the whole thing just reboots, goes through the loading sequence again, and eventually the screen just goes black.

granitepuma10 said:I went ahead and wiped the partitions, formatted everything, and cleared the slate entirely. I performed a fresh installation, which seemed to go off without a single hitch—though it did prompt me for some domain settings, which I simply bypassed by hitting "skip." Everything proceeded normally until the system rebooted and began loading Windows XP. That’s when things took a turn for the worse; the monitor just cuts out completely. I tried removing the CD to see if that would push the process forward, but just as it reaches the point where the desktop should finally load, the screen goes black again. It just sits there, unresponsive, glowing with that dull orange light as if it’s stuck in standby mode.

Why would you do that? Don't yank the disc out until it's actually finished. That system hang usually happens because it gets stuck in a loop trying to find a file on the CD that isn't there anymore since you pulled it...

By the way, if you're hunting for drivers for ancient motherboards, I've actually managed to track down some seriously prehistoric stuff on these sites:

http://www.motherboard.cz/driver/mbdriver.htm
http://www.motherboard.cz/soltek.htm

Give them a shot if you're stuck.

I’ve run a scan on my RAM and there were no errors found. I also ran a check using HDTune, and the HDD shows absolutely no issues either. I even booted into Windows via Hiren's BootCD to perform a disk check, and everything loaded onto the desktop without a single hitch. However, just now—literally as I am sitting here typing this—I hit the desktop, it stays stable for about ten seconds, and then suddenly everything freezes, the image hangs, and the screen goes black. I’m at a bit of a loss here. It clearly isn't the graphics card because I can still see an image right up until the freeze. The hard drive is error-free, the RAM passed its tests, and I’ve inspected the motherboard; all the capacitors look perfectly fine. What on earth could be causing this? I suppose it might be a Windows issue, though I doubt it; I installed the latest version of XP from a reliable source, kept it fully updated, and I haven't heard anyone else complaining about stability issues with this build.

Then the motherboard just fried 🤷

I suppose there might be some sort of trick to verify if the motherboard is actually failing? It’s possible the issue lies somewhere within Windows itself. Right now, the system manages to reach the desktop for maybe ten seconds before everything just freezes up entirely. However, when I boot using Hiren's BootCD and run into that mini XP environment, things seem fine—I can download drivers and browse the web without any issues.

I’m just going to echo what fadedorca66 suggested;

fadedorca66 said:If I were you, I'd just set those $17 aside and start saving up for a whole new tower. Honestly? You might grab those RAM sticks only to realize they aren't even compatible. Or maybe they work, but then you find out your hard drive is acting up. Or it's the motherboard, or the power supply... it’s a rabbit hole. Before you know it, you've bought new RAM and now you need something else. It's a money pit, and you can probably find a prebuilt on Newegg for $167 that would run circles around this setup anyway.

for example; http://www.craigslist.org/cs/pc-computers/d...oglas-14806909

I suppose there is really no point in trying to hunt down the error in this particular case
The trouble is, I simply don't have $167...

The thing is, you really need to figure out if the motherboard is actually shot. Any repair shop is going to charge you for the diagnostic alone. In a best-case scenario, maybe it’s just a capacitor on the board that needs replacing—but honestly, it's rare to find someone willing to deal with motherboard soldering these days, and if they do, you're paying a premium for it.

As far as I know, there isn't really any software-based way to diagnose a motherboard.

Edit: Okay, my bad—I was wrong about the diagnostics.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001089.htm
You could also check out Hiren's BootCD http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

I currently have Hiren's BootCD running, and I am using one of the diagnostic tools within the suite to run some system checks.
I suppose I might try installing a fresh version of Windows next.

Maybe try installing from a USB stick.

You can burn the ISO to a USB using Rufus, and if your motherboard doesn't support booting from USB via Hiren's BootCD, you might need to use PLOP Boot Manager.

So, how exactly does one go about setting up that Plop Boot Manager? I suppose it’s all a matter of following the right sequence, though I suspect there might be more to it than meets the eye. One can't just wing it, I think.
I suppose I should clarify—how exactly are you planning to check the motherboard using that software suite within Hiren's BootCD? Which specific tool are you looking for?

Once you launch it, if it detects a drive, it'll probably just ask if you want to boot from there.

As for the motherboard, you can't really run diagnostics on it; you're basically stuck just eyeballing it to see if any capacitors look blown.

I can't quite figure out what happened; I tried to get everything sorted, and I'm certain I installed the OS correctly... right now, it’s been running smoothly for about half an hour without any freezing, so I decided to check which drivers I actually need. Then, suddenly, it just froze up on me. I ended up pulling out my high-performance RAM stick and left the weaker one in, though I moved it over to the third slot just to see if that would help. Now I'm sitting here in Safe Mode trying to make sense of it all, but I guess I'm not exactly a genius when it comes to this stuff.

Just move this to a new thread. No point having two separate ones, and I don't want to merge them now because everything will just get messy.