The problem started yesterday. My computer was doing perfectly fine but then it crashed while running some program. so i had to perform a hard shutdown and restart the comp. the computer was still working fine after that one time but the program was buggy and kept crashing and i had to keep doing the hard shutdown. now times this whole scenario by 30 cause i shut it down nearly that many times from all the crashes. but now my comp wont even last 5 minutes before crashing and this is with the program not even running. i uninstalled it and same thing, i get a crash after 5 minutes. and booting up takes a long time in some parts and even still it doesnt always turn on correctly, it freezes in boot up aswell. even in bios it will freeze. so now im stuck. i tried to reinstall vista and it froze in the middle of reinstallation and then i ran the thing again and finished it up but its still crashing. so im guessing the motherboard got ruined because if it was power supply it would shut down after the crash wouldnt it? and its probably not software cause i completely reset the comp and reinstalled vista and i even tried switching wireless cards and mouse/keyboard. i also ran hp diagnostics tools and it says harddrive memory and cpu passed all the tests.
so pleeeaaase help meee. i cant use this thing without it freezing up every 5 minutes. i actually havnt even been able to get past the initial time setup pages and stuff when you reinstall vista. (using a dif. comp)

My father’s computer is very slow and it makes a grinding noise when it has to process information. I’m pretty sure it’s not a problem on the software end. I think maybe the RAM is toast or the hard drive damaged. Is there a diagnostic tool in XP (or maybe in BIOS) that can run checks on my hardware to see if they are performing as they should?

I can see the drive in the device manager and it shows up in the BIOS when I first boot up. When I run the Western Digital diagnostic software it detects the hard drive as well but it wants to erase the data in order to install it. Is there a way to get the data off the hard drive before it is installed or otherwise get My Computer to recognize it?
Thanks

so turn it on and the fans start up but it wont load the bios ive changed the battery but nothing changed is there any diagnostic software which i can install on one computer and scan the other via sata port or usb price is not a problem

BSOD: Copied over /repair/software and now can't login!?
My work computer recently stopped working. When I boot it up, it gives me blue screen with hive message can't find system32\config\system. I went into recovery console but it wanted admin password which I don't have and corporate won't give me. I don't want to send it in and wait to get it back, so I hooked up hdd to a desktop and copied c:\windows\repair\software to c:\windows\system32\config\sof… Put hdd back into laptop and booted up and it boots into windows! However, it doesn't recognize my username/password anymore. What can I do to fix this?
Thanks, but this is not a desktop it is a laptop. It is not the BIOS PW.
I have permission to fix my own computer. I am in IT at my local branch, but happen to work for a huge corporation who doesn't want to give me the ADMIN PW for obvious reasons.

I am trying to repair it on my own as mailing it in will take several weeks for a repair. Again, I do have permission to repair it on my own.

Thanks for the responses.