Fresh install of windows, computer has so many problems now.

So my friend has a piece of crap computer that was running super slow and he asked me if I could help him get it running at acceptable speeds. We determined that it was necessary to reinstall windows, and so that was our plan. The only windows I had access to was XP (the computers hardware was from about that era also) and so thats what we installed.

After we installed XP theres been nothing but problems. Windows won't detect my external hard drive to transfer their information back to their fresh install. Windows won't automatically download the service packs. Worst of all the computer will all of a sudden decide to stop working. For example if i try to open up my computer or try to restart the computer nothing will happen, but you can still navigate through windows or go into the start menu and the computer will do it fluently as if there is no bog down at all. But when I try resetting it now the computer won't even boot up at a reasonable rate. It will for example sit at the motherboard splash screen (where your ordinarily able to enter bios) seemingly frozen there, it seems even before windows tries to start up, and you can't even go into the bios settings. It will EVENTUALLY continue on to boot up to windows (or it will eventually go into bios if you tried to enter it during the "frozen state", after like 5-10 minutes of sitting there. When windows does load up your not even able to start any programs or even go into my computer.

So I was going to try to reinstall windows again... Does anyone know what could possibly be wrong with it? Bad windows install? Bad hardware?

 

If it's hanging at the motherboard splash screen it's not software..... Have you opened it up and checked to see if it's dirty as hell inside? At that age it could be a solid mass of dust, and electrical contacts for RAM, Video card, etc. could be corroded/dirty. A fresh install of Windows can't work if there's hardware issues......

 

Make sure the hardware inside is free of thick dust masses. After that, try and reinstall windows and while its installing, make sure you don't interrupt. Don't even click, just let it finish through.

 

Isn't XP EOL?[end of life] only updates you get are malicious software tool or at least thats what i was getting before my xp box died.

 

Beep codes. are there any beeps from PC speaker that could identify possible problems.

What i would do is take every component out, spray with contact cleaner[NOT WD-40], USE A PENCIL eraser on the ram contacts to get rid of any oxidation.
what are the rails looking like?