help with new pc

[lewson]

I brought a new pc today off my mate (for something worth £10) Its a dell inspron 531 with 4gb ram and amd 5600+

The thing was loaded with virusses so i stuck in the xp install cd. it hangs like 5 mins into it. Any ideas whats wrong? what i should try?

[Blazinkaos]

Hmm a friend of mine had a issue like that so i used the program called dban idk if you ever heard of it but it completely whips out the hard drive clean to start fresh again. But ill wait see what others say.

[injungleist]

i use a kill disk from active@ and i also use a program called Dr.web for before the kill disk, but  if you dont need anything from the computer use kill disk, it will cover all info with 000000000. and start new.

[loganbyers07]

i use to use drive nuke whenever that happened then I would just install onto it. But usually I will just boot into setup and format the hdd using that and re install it.

[lewson]

What so its a problem with the hdd?

[psp339]

I would just plug the hdd into another computer and format it then install windows on it with the computer you just bought.

[lewson]

Ill try the harddrive thing tomorrow, What it does is during the part of the install where it copies the files over (blue screen yellow progress bar) the fans will kick up to 100% and about 30 secs later the pc just shuts off
Ive replaced the the thermal paste and its not getting too hot.

[blackburn]

Personally, I use Acronis Boot Disk for working with hard drives. It is the ultimate tool of all of the ones I have tried. You might have some bad data sectors on the drive which can sometimes be fixed, but you best best would be like what everyone else is saying. Format the HDD and start over. 

[lewson]

Hmmm.... i wrote all zero's, still dont work so its defo not the harddrive. Ill try memtest.

Edit: Ive tried memtest as usual the fans kicked up and it didn't finish.ill take out the ram and try with one stick.

Edit 2: I'm running out of options, all sticks of ram work fine. but the computer still dies. It sounds like its overheating, but its not getting no where near hot enough.

Do dells have there own powersupplys, this motherboard takes 24 pin but im not sure wether  it will fry with another psu.

Edit 3: The motherboards faulty, and the pc is 2 months out of warranty, So im guna chook it. Thanks for the help.

[aquatsr]

What sort of RAM is it? I may want to buy it off you if it still works.

[lewson]

Its ddr 2 800 MHz but im not selling the ram ill be using it in another machine sorry.