I have been trying to reformat my computer with Windows 2000 and it won't reinstall. Its the same OS I had before but now when it gets to about 90% it starts giving me all different types of messages and sometimes it freezes before it even starts. I'm not good with computers I can put them together but when it comes to error messages I am at a lost. My husband won't help me because he is lazy so I am hoping someone here can because I am getting frustrated. (I don't know if you need to know this but all the hardware is the same from when I had windows 2002 before nothing has changed.) Here are the different error messages: 1) There is a blue error screen that says bad pool 2) Nother blue screen that says My ACPI BIOS is not fully compliant with ACPI specifications and should get updated at hardware-update.com 3) Another blue screen that says motherboard can't be detected 4) While its installing I get messages that say it cannot install certain files, I can retry, not install or quit..sometimes if I hit retry it will install but then the same thing will happen again with another file. I'm thinking that there might be a problem with the cdrom drive not reading correctly which would probably cause the last error as well as freezing when its preparing to install windows 2000. Any help would be appreciated as I have no idea what is going on and what I should do. Thank you in advance!

Acidlilies: You certainly have a problem. In my experience the problems you are having can be caused by a number of faults. 1. Bios setup 2. memory problems 3. Faulty processor Are you OK fiddling with the BIOS settings on your machine? These may have unsuitable options selected for some reason. Are you happy about taking the lid off your machine and removing some memory? I doubt its the CD-ROM drive but am old enough to know that I know nothing. Otheres may have a better option but I'd start with the bios and work downwards into the guts of the machine. If you choose to do this let me know. Regards Richard

Thanks for replying. I have no problems with opening up computers. I have built more than 6 computers in the past year. I'm just still learning how to fiddle with all the programs computers need in order to work. I really have never messed with BIOS except to change the order of how a computer boots up, changing time and putting in a password. But I am willing to look into it. I will open up the computer and make sure nothing is loose aswell as checking my ram because I noticed last night when I was trying to get it to work again that the ram kept changing to different numbers. Plus when I was building a computer a few months back I remembered taking out some ram from my pc because the person wanted more and it was shortly after that that I noticed something was wrong. I was told it may be the cause of a virus but I don't believe so because I ran the virus software from symantic a few times before the pc died and there were no viruses. Again thanks for your reply. I will look into your suggestions when I get back from work.

Acidlilies: It is almost definitely not a virus. More like hardwrae/bios. Good luck Richard

Melissa I don't really know enough about this to venture an opinion, but I've been trawling round the web looking for hints and tips to help whip up enough courage to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows 2000. Anyway - in for a penny, in for a pound - I came upon this in the "cyberwalker" site which suggests that there are two situations: (a) where your system can handle a bootable CD Rom so permitting the Recovery console utility on the Widows CD Rom; and (b) where it can't so you have to use a start-up disk on a 3.5" floppy (also seen this referred to as boot disk, system disk, and emergency repair disk). Here's the actual quote "You can do this one of two ways by using the Windows XP startup disks or if your computer supports a bootable CD-ROM -- most computers built since 2001 have this feature -- use the Recovery Console tool on the Windows NT/2000 CD-ROM. More on that shortly........ " It sounds like you're asuming you can use the Recovery console, perhaps you can't. Max PS By the way, if anyone can confirm that all these names refer to one and the same thing i.e. system = boot = repair), that would give me more confidence I'll be doing the right thing.