When building a machine it takes 2 things.
1) The skill to build it.
2) A lot of luck.

Building from the ground up isn't that difficult. You just have to pay attention.
The luck come in when your purchasing your parts. Its all about timing and getting the best deal.
The computer I built 3 years ago took about 45 days to build. Like has been said lots of shopping for best price. You spend what you can afford but if done right you can have a machine that lasts well into the future.

Thank you both for the suggestions. App, I really appreciate your offer of continued help from the forum. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking advantage by asking so many questions. CD3 has been with me on this from the beginning. Can't thank you all enough. OK, done with the sappy stuff.

CD3: I have run checkdisk & repair, but not Avast. I did run my regular CA security suite (so so), but also Malwarebytes which has always been excellent. I didn't know that Avast checks the MBR. I've heard it's a good program. I will try your excellent suggestion of checking all the power supply voltages. That's a good one, with objective results. Thanks. (Unfortunately, this Dell uses a proprietary power supply which is expensive and hard to find. If it's a bad PS, I'll probably just trash it. I did read an article about modifying a standard PS so the pinouts match the Dell PS. All the voltages are the same, Dell just decided to make the pinout configuration different, so you had to buy it from them.)

App: Like many people, I used to think that a Format erased the drive. I recently learned it does not touch the mbr. I use a program called Active Killdisk which overwrites the entire physical drive. As far as I know, nothing can survive that. Here's the thing. I did replace the original drive with a brand new one 2 years ago, but I never did a fresh install on it. I just cloned it from the original 8 year old dive. That was before I learned about MBR viruses. I just assumed the old drive was going bad, so I didn't see the harm in just cloning everything to a new HDD. This MBR virus (worm) may have been on the original drive for years, and I just copied it over. If it is an MBR virus, and I "kill" the entire drive and do a fresh install, that will at least narrow it down to either an infection on the HDD (which will be gone), or something in the PC (power supply, chipset, etc).

Thanks for the suggestion to build my own PC. I don't think I have the energy for that one.

Well, not much more to say. I'll check the PS voltages, and if they're OK, go ahead with the HDD kill and fresh install. That's all the strength I have left for this beast.

Cheers all...

Active Kill Disk can take quite some time, your almost better off buying an extra drive for your fresh install.

I'm actually considering that. But it only took 4 hours to kill a 250GB HDD through a USB connection. Is that worth $60? Took me overnight to test my RAM. Yikes!

Ram testing is setup to make continuous passes until you tell it to stop. All the bad ram I have ever seen (which isn't much) have all failed within minutes of starting the test. The long pass runs are to look for intermittent errors that seldom occur.

If you kill your 250 and install your OS, and two or three months down the line your issue rears its ugly head, what do you know? Could the 250 be a bad drive as well as the original? Adding a 500gig all by itself should tell you if the issue is drive related. There's a very slim chance you'll get another bad drive but I doubt it would do the same thing. And after your testing is over, you can add the old killed 250 back as a slave and have a total of 750gig. If you partition a 500 gig into 2 250 partitions you will also be able to copy the OS from the 500 to the 250 and use that as you C drive and kill the 500 as storage (I like to keep my smallest drive C for defrag and virus cleanup reasons and store everything on a secondary).

I thought about your suggestion to buy a new HDD instead of killing the "slightly" used one, after my last post, and decided to take your advice for the reasons you just listed. It rules out one more variable.

However, I have also been reading a lot about 48 bit LBA support, and found several people that have had EXACTLY the same symptoms as me... the boot sector getting corrupted intermittently.

Here's the deal: I have an old BIOS, almost certainly 28 bit. I am using XP SP3 as a workaround to run the > 137GB HDD (250GB in my case). It has been shown by others, that you apparently cannot depend on XP for this. It is unstable. The suggested solutions are, flash the BIOS to 48 bit LBA support, or partition down the HDD < 137GB, or both. Several people completely solved their MBR corruptions by just using a smaller partition for the operating system.

That said, there are other articles that state that this is unacceptable for various reason I don't even understand. One said that it doesn't matter if you have a 48 bit LBA BIOS if your mobo IDE controller is not 48 bit compliant.

I'm going to try the smaller partition (on the new HDD) and see if that does the trick.

Very interesting, and complex stuff.

I just spotted a search link that said the LBA is only a problem for XP with no SP's yet (it was about the dell dim 8100 too). That means if your install disk is the original with no SP's added, the system will install with the 137 limit and your stuck with the lower LBA. If you can slipstream your install disk with at least SP1 (google nlite and use it for sp only don't fool around... YET!) it should solve that issue. I suspect that since XP is not listed in the OS choices for your PC at the Dell site, that Dell is aware of an issue it wants no responsibility for, so they removed XP from the list and limited Bios choices to the last one with no issues for Win 2000. I saw no way to access older ones.
Google:
Dell Dimension 8100 archived bios

Some interesting reading, including mention of an XP bios (B81XPP2.exe) that seems to have disappeared.

A few remarks about installing A09 to the Dim 8100, If you think about it though, since the bios is being flashed from DOS, what OS you have is irrelevant, it hasn't even loaded yet, you could flash a bios with a floppy with no hard drive installed, just memory (it creates a virtual drive from your memory sticks). So maybe its failing cause it knows the 24bit HD will not be seen by the new 48bit bios. Some one should ask Santa for an expensive gift next year.

My XP install CD is indeed prior to any service packs. I install it on an old small HDD (< 137GB), then add SP1a, then SP3 (must add SP1a 1st, or SP3 won't load). Once I have SP3 installed, I can clone the old 40GB HDD to a 250GB HDD.

Do you see anything wrong with this procedure above?

Also, I decided to flash the BIOS with Dell's XP2 update (click here ). I've been told to stop over-thinking this and just do it. I confirmed with Dell Tech Support, and 2 long term Dell Forum "experts" that 48 bit LBA support was added in ver A07, and is definitely included in BIOS ver XP2. I have no idea why they have a special BIOS update for WinXP.

Do you know if there is some way to confirm that this XP2 BIOS update does actually have the 48 bit LBA support, once I install it?

Just for kicks, I found a little utility to copy an installed BIOS if anyone wants to make a backup before a flash: http://www.ehow.com/how_5744724_create-flash-bios-backup.html

Looks like the link didn't transfer for the XP2 BIOS Update. Here it is: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R362 58&SystemID=DIM_PNT_P4_8100&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid =308&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=6&formatcnt=2&libid =1&fileid=40731

The article I saw mentioned that installing with no sp's caused the system to install with only 28bit addressing, and it could not be changed by updating to new sp's. That's why I mentioned nlite. It's fairly straight forward and you don't mess with your disk. You just copy the contents of the disk to the hard drive and nlite works on it there. So you would check only to add the sp's and not to create a boot disk on the first pass. Integrate sp1a first then integrate sp3, and during the sp3 integration also check the box for creating a boot iso and your done. There are a lot of other things you can mess around with but for now stick to getting a disk you burn with the sp's on it and your LBA problem should go away. Nlite also has links to files for integration, but I have never looked for sp1a since I have never needed it. I have been integrating disks with SP's and with the latest criticals as well so I don't have a ton of stuff to download from MS after install. So with that in mind you might want to grab the critical updates too while you messing around. Once you get a good SP3 with the latest criticals you'll be happy as a clam.

Let me see if I understand this:

NLite integrates the XP, SP1a, and SP3 onto a single CD that I would burn for future installs of XP-SP3 ? And this would then give me the 48 bit LBA support, that I may not be getting now by starting with a straight XP CD?

I don't know if this makes any difference, but my XP CD is an "upgrade" from Win98. It always asks me to install the original Win98 CD during the XP installation to verify the files. Would that make any difference in using Nlite?

App, If the PC BIOS is already 48 bit LBA compliant, does the XP issue even matter? 2 of my PC's are, and I was going to flash the BIOS on the 3rd. I'm certain now that I have the right version.

One last thing that is puzzling about the NLite scenario. If starting with a straight XP CD, locks the OS at 28 bit, how is it that I am able to run a 250GB HDD (fully recognizable in disk management) after I install SP3?

Thanks for the suggestion. If I got it right, I love the idea of merging 3 CDs into one.

After installing SP3 from the original disk's install that was made in 28bit, the disk is still 28bit but the whole disk is recognized in size after SP3 not any change in LBA the SP fixes the limit but not by changing it to 48bit. Once the disk has been created as 28bit it cannot be changed to 48bit by any SP. I should have saved the link I saw for you to read.
I don't think the upgrade is a problem, since all nlite sees is the i386 files and that's where it updates the SP's. You cannot go from original straight to SP3 as you found out, and it's the same with nlite. Although (I have never done this) you might be able to load them in order (actually pointing to them from within nlite) and nlite would install sp1a then sp2 or 3 which ever you choose. The nlite site has many tutorials and you can get help in the forum. Really that's the place to get it right. If you want to see how its done manually with just windows and the files from the commandline, Google "slipstream XP". There you will see how to integrate sp's and also critical updates without nlites help. There is a link on the nlite site to get all the criticals up to last month or so (Links > Xable - XP Update Packs). I'm not sure about the SP's, will it take exe files or do you have to extract them (winrar and 7zip will do it). I do know that you have to use nlite on a machine that has at least dot net 2.0 and is also 32bit I believe.

Go through a few tutorials and look in the forum to see what others are doing before you dive in. I wouldn't fool around too much, nlite can do a lot if stuff like turn off the shortcut arrows and change what is or isn't on the desktop and a ton of things I don't even know what they are.

I also had to use a win98 disk verification to load XP, but that was a while back, and nlite wasn't born yet so I'm unsure of two sp's at once. To be safe do them one at a time. Since the first step is to extract the disk to the hard drive (ultraiso or any freeware iso extract utility can do this) the only files you mess with are not on the disk itself. And if you use an CD-RW re-writable for testing, you can be sure its bootable and installs correctly before burning a hard copy.

Wow. This is a bit over my head. The main thing I need to better understand is a 28 bit vs a 48 bit "disk". Are you referring to the HDD? I didn't know that the OS codes the HDD to 28 or 48 bit, if I am understanding you correctly.

I flashed the BIOS to 48 bit. If it's important to have a 48 bit OS or HDD (?? ), maybe I should just invest in a new XP-SP3 CD. They're getting cheap.

Can you please clarify above in novice language?

Thanks.

App. I have been reading for hours on the issue you brought up regarding a fresh install of Windows XP "creating" a 28 bit LBA hard drive, even if you update to Service Pack 1 or later.

The best that I can tell are these 2 points:

1) Newer hard drives are manufactured to be 48 bit

2) Adding SP1 (or later) to an original Windows XP installation is the same as installing Windows XP SP1 (or later).

If the BIOS and the HDD are 48 bit, then updating XP to SP1, 2, or 3 gives you full 48 bit addressing.

The only thing you may need to do if updating from Windows XP to SP1, is use a partition tool to expand the 137GB partition created by the original Windows installation.

This site seems to be the preeminent source for 48 bit LBA information. Please see the last paragraph at this link: http://www.48bitlba.com/winxp.htm

If I have misunderstood, PLEASE let me know.

Thanks...

I'm no expert on 48bit vs 28bit its never been an issue for me. The last paragraph you mention says what I said, you can upgrade to sp1 to get more than 137gig room (using a partition tool or not) but I believe the drive will still run at 28bit from the original sp0 install. Unless you do a fresh install with at least sp1 "integrated on the disk" you will end up in 28bit mode and I believe the bios must be in 28bit to match, but I do not know for sure. It's the hard drive that determines 28bit or 48bit. 48bit compliant is probably able to run at 28bit too but you do not get the full benefit of 48bitt addressing.

The first paragraph says you also have to have a 48bit compatible bios, if your original hard drive was 28bit only, they probably put a 28bit bios (flashed) in for the drive, and as long as you kept installing from your original disk there was no problem. But when you went to flash to A09 it wouldn't do it cause the drive was 28bit or the bios doesn't want to go from 28bit to 48bit for fear of compatibility issues or has no 28bit capability. Perhaps dropping an e-mail to Dell tech support could ease your mind. Explain your predicament and see what they say. I know in really old machines bios chips could be unplugged and replaced unlike machines today. Perhaps you have to replace it to get 48bit addressing. I'm sure they would gladly charge you an arm and a leg for a new one.

As I mentioned before you can try installing the bios from floppy with the drive disconnected and see if you get the same error. I don't think you have to have a hard drive installed to flash a bios. With no hard drive would the 48bit addressing still be an issue?

Here is some more information on the subject if your interested.

Logical block addressing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


48bitLBA.com - Overview

I guess you can interpret that statement either way. I see your point.

During my research, I kept reading over and over, that the drives are "manufactured" to be 48 bit. I can't find any statements that say, they will operate at 28 bit.

You're more of an expert than me, that's for sure. Just thinking it through though, even if the SP1 was integrated in the XP CD, wouldn't it still load in steps from the single XP CD? First XP, then SP1, which would be the same as loading them manually??

I don't know...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mitchsc

I guess you can interpret that statement either way. I see your point.

During my research, I kept reading over and over, that the drives are "manufactured" to be 48 bit. I can't find any statements that say, they will operate at 28 bit.

You're more of an expert than me, that's for sure. Just thinking it thru though, even if the SP1 was integrated in the XP CD, wouldn't it still load in steps from the single XP CD? First XP, then SP1, which would be the same as loading them manually???

I don't know...

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Check the second link I posted in the above thread. It has tools in it so you don't have to worry about this issue. Its on the left side of the page posted.