[CA320]

System worked fine for nearly 1 year. Experienced series of disk controller errors on partition D of hard disk, chkdsk ran on next boot, after which network connection shows limited or no connectivity. (Op system is on C partition) Coincidence? Also have gotten error message from Windows twice during numerous boots over past few days of troubleshooting. "Windows is unable to determine the license status of this machine" or words to that effect. When this happens, screen says logging off for several seconds, then proceeds to finish booting!

Machine is Gateway Athlon 1200, WinXP Pro, with 3COM 10 MB ethernet card. Network status showed it receiving packets but not sending any. Tried removing and reinstalling card drivers, no help. Tried new network card, no help. back to original 3 com card. Deleted and re-installed network components (except Eacflt driver, which wouldn't delete because it was in use) Have now managed to break it completely - won't send OR recieve packets. Repair tool says it can't renew IP address.

Replaced HD temporarily with older one containing older version of Win XP - network connection works fine. Did look through forum threads, tried some of posted checklist items with no luck. I'm stumped.

 

[JohnWill]

If you have a working version of XP, why not clone that onto the new drive? From the multiple symptoms, that might be the path of least resistance.

 

[CA320]

Actually I had something I thought was even better. Was afraid that the old drive was failing and wanted to move to a new one. I have a Drive Image 8.0 image of the old drive taken in early November that I was trying to install on a new HD. This had worked for me in the past but now even though Drive Image reports success at creating the image, I get an error message when I try to boot from that drive that says "Windows can't boot from this drive due to a drive hardware configuration problem." I tried this on two different new drives with the same result. If I connect the drive as a slave and boot from another drive, XP has no problem reading it. Wonder if Microsoft has added an update that prevents use of Drive Image to clone another drive? I had successfully restored an XP drive this way a couple years ago but that was many updates ago.

Maybe I'll try restoring the image to the original drive and see if that works although I'm still concerned about that drive's reliability. Probably should bite the bullet and just do a clean install but it sure is a pain to reload a bunch of software and go get the updates!