Hi there,
I have P4 3.0ghz processor on mercury mother board with 512MB RAM. My system's Windows XP SP2 seems to be behaving a bit strangely. It seems as if hanged when I login as Administrator but when I login as simple user it works but when I click on c: or d: etc. drives in Windows Explorer it opens Open With dialog box. I assume it is some VIRUS, so I decided to re-install Windows XP (SP3 this time) but when I started installation just after the blue screen that say "Inspecting Your Computer" the monitor turns black and hard-disk LED keeps glowing and goes on. Then I tried XP SP2 installation but same results. The black screen never returns back even after an hour.

Please advice me, thank you

Did you boot from the Windows CD? If you didn't, I suggest that you do that.

Boot from the CD. I prefer to delete the current partition and recreate it and I suggest you do the same.

If that doesn't work, you may have a hardware problem.

A 3.0 Ghz PC with only 512 MB RAM? I am very surprised you do not get a message saying that your system cannot handle XP.
I would suggest a minimum of 1.0 Gigs of RAM to successfully install and use XP...

Xp min sys requirements


# Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
# At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
# At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk

I would attempt to do a repair installation before doing full install

Repair Installation
A Repair Install will replace the system files with the files on the XP CD used for the Repair Install. It will leave your applications and settings intact, but Windows updates will need to be reapplied.

Perform a Repair Installation (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx)

Hey it looks like a problem in reading the Hard drive or the CD. I suggest you to remove and reconnect the Hard drive once, check the BIOS settings that the first boot device is CD ROM and the next boot device is Hard drive and disable all other boot devices. If this didn't resolved, then try to use another XP CD. Your Computer greatly supports Windows XP. Don't worry about it dude!!

It sounds like you're suffering from a failing/failed physical hard drive issue. I suggest getting online and downloading the free version of Drive Fitness or some other hard drive diagnostic tool that you can burn to disk. Boot the computer and select CD/DVD drive as your primary boot device and run the diagnostic. Drive Fitness is pretty straight forward and I suggest that you use the advanced test on your drive. Results are pretty obvious, Green Screen is a good drive, Red Screen with error code which you can Google is a failed drive.