As long as you are sure the machine and drive are OK and you can get hold of
any b bespoke drivers etc, go for a reformat. You don't know what abuse
might have been inflicted on windows before you got to it. I have a similar
issue here on an hp laptop. If you uninstall the graphics drivers it boots
up fine but if you let it reinstall them and reboot it ends up with no
screen or a distorted one after several blue screens on boot up.
Womderful, as there seems to be everythign under the sun booting in at
start up so first step switch em all off!

The only issue wth a complete reinstall is the laboriaus installation of
service packs and windoze updates and all the software you want and
configuring it all how you want it.

Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"the_constructor" wrote in message
o.uk...
Had a Dell Dimension 9100 given to me a couple of days ago and as soon as
I switched on I got the dreaded BSOD. Looking on the internet for advice,
the BSOD covers numerious problems.

I took the hard drive out and put it into another computer and virus
checked it. It found 2 viruses which were deleted, then it was placed back
into DELL PC and it worked fine. I did a manufacturers reset hoping this
would cure my problems. It did and it didn't. I took all the AOL, Tiscali
and Norton crap off and switched on the day after only to be greeted with
the BSOD again.

Does the manufactures reset just copy new files to the old file structure
or does it do a complete format of the hard drive and also when I press
Ctrl + F11 at bootup does this read a file on the non manufacturers part
of the hard drive before it restores the hard drive.

I was thinking of reformatting the hard drive using a Win XP disc and then
doing a manufacturers reset.

Advice most welcome please.....

Jim G