Here is a quick rundown:

Laptop boots, sometimes. IF it does it says the "operating system is installed incorrectly", please reboot or reinstall. I try to format the drive (use bios to boot from CD and format using XP disc) but usually about halfway through it freezes. The laptop is not too hot, being moved, or anything. Before trying to format the drive (which is now half formatted and causing the 'os not correctly installed') the laptop would fully boot to the desktop and last between 5 and 40 minutes before flashing the blue screen of death, which went way too fast to read, and then refusing to boot for a while.
The laptop does nothing now, I can get in the BIOS and run a test on the harddrive which reports back "fine". I have no clue what to check, I build desktops for people and am pretty savvy, but no idea where to start as far as bad hardware on a laptop. It seems like the harddrive to me, should I try to replace it? Think that is the problem? Im gonna bring it outside (its only 20 degrees out) and see if it will run for longer, maybe it is a heat problem.

Any ideas guys? I have both XP and Vista and have tried both, nothing will work long enough to format the entire drive.

Laptop specs:
AMD 1.8 GhZ
ATI 200M graphics card
1GB memory
80 GB harddrive
It's an HP with all the goodies, no idea what has been loaded on the laptop, friend said I could have it if I fixed it.

 

no idea. try a manual system "reset" then it might coordinate all of the hardware? (you know? like a power cycle)

Sounds like theres a wrench in your hardware cogs, so to speak, and something is clashing.
Bring it back down to factory default if you can from bios then re-install only the necassary hardware (to run the os) and go over the components that might be conflicting. Try running it with only the harddrive.
Also if all else fails install the HD into another system to see if that might be the problem so on so forth with the rest of the harware until you find the culprit.

 

Reset the bios to default and formatted the drive. XP installer rebooted the laptop and it got to 27% done with the install of XP and it crashed again. Now I cant do anything. Good suggestion, but it didnt take.


Sometimes it makes 3 or 4 distinct beeps upon starting (but doesnt boot up) gonna check online for an answer.

 

I'd check to make sure your copy of the XP CD isn't messed up. If you figure out that the CD is fine than its a safe bet to assume its a hardware problem. Then I'd try to disable misc crap in the bios. Like the floppy drive(if you have one), any serial ports, the usb host controller, cdrom, you get the idea. Try to install it then. If it still doesn't work then I'd say just trash the laptop.

 

Just read that. You're probably ****ed then. I'm sure you know beep sounds usually means a hardware problem.

 

Yeah, seems like a hardware prob. NO matter what I do, it freezes and then blue screens me after 'x' amount of time. Should I try and replace the hard drive? No such thing as bad memory causing the probs I have, maybe its something corrupt on the harddrive.

 

Check the XP CD first.

 

Tried my vista CD and it will start to load vista, but freeze like with XP and crash. I dont think its the CD drive, cause the pc did work before with no cd in the drive. I am still thinking harddrive. How hard to install a new one? Its a new HP laptop (no idea on model, just know the specs from being in the BIOS.

 

New hard drive, same crap. This happened twice, with both XP and vista...this laptop is fried.

 

If it's a new HP, won't it have a second drive as a back up for windows?
Maybe having 2 differn't sets of windows on there is whats messing up the installation?

Id try resetting your ram as well,