I've tried booting from the CD, but even that fails before things get to a point that I can get running.
Replacing memory is not an option at this point. My PC has an ASUS P4T533-C motherboard and uses DDR SDRAM PC-3200 400Mhz chips.
Last time I looked at these they were $200+ for a gig of memory. I'm not going to shell out that kind of money unless I know for SURE that that will solve the problem.
Of course I'd need two gigs, so that's $400 or better right there. The processor is a P4 3.06GHz. It has a Radeon 9800 series graphics card ands a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 audio system.
It has two DVD RW drives, one a dual layer.
Is it even worth fixing? I can get a new Gateway FX PC at Best Buy for about $1200 with a good payment plan (18mo, interest free) but I'm still paying off the laptop.
http://www.gateway.com/programs/fxseries/
Eventually I'll have to get a USB interface for the hard drives so that I can get the data off them. *sigh*
I wonder if I can get an external drive case for the DVD drive too.
For now I'm living with the laptop,Gateway P-6860FX with an Intel Core2 Duo T5550 at 1.83 GHz. and 4 Gb of RAM. It'll run 2nd Life and WoW so it'll do.
Maybe I don't need the PC at all ... Just a good Hi-Def large monitor.