Problems with old computer

[Soviet_Genius]

I have an old win2k computer. Today when I turned it on, it booted normally until the screen with the blue background where a small window comes up which says "Windows is starting up..." right before it asks for user/pass but that window never came up. It just froze on the blank blue background for about 30 seconds and then rebooted by itself. Then it did the same thing again. The third time, it did a chkdsk, rebooted, and got stuck on the blank screen with the blue background not doing anything. If I restart it it just does the exact same thing again.

Asus P4B Motherboard
Pentium 4 1.5 GHz
256 MB RAM
40 GB Maxtor hard drive
Windows 2000 Professional
nVidia GeForce 2 MX

Any ideas?

EDIT: It just loaded up to the window that says "Windows is starting up" but rebooted again.

EDIT 2: "DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER." on the POST screen.     Seems like the hard drive is dying...

[Broni]

Run diagnostic tool: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

[Soviet_Genius]

Is the computer supposed to boot off the floppy? It didn't, and I checked BIOS to make sure that the floppy drive is the first thing in the boot order, and I tried to load the floppy on a different computer but it didn't work there either.

[Broni]

It has to be bootable floppy, not ANY floppy.

[Soviet_Genius]

How do I tell the difference? I never knew there were bootable and unbootable floppies...

[Broni]

Bootdisk has to have necessary system files on it.
You can get any bootdisk from here: http://bootdisk.com/

[Soviet_Genius]

Ok I finally got around to running the diagnostics and it found 4 errors and fixed them, but the computer still does the same thing. When I try to boot in safe mode, I get to the user/password prompt but as soon as I press enter to log on the computer BSODs for a millisecond and reboots. Win2k apparently doesn't have a "disable reboot on system failure" option on the screen where you choose safe mode/safe mode with networking/etc so I don't know what to do. I use this machine for testing, I'm thinking I should install Ubuntu server on it and set up a small CS server...

[Broni]

I wouldn't trust any hard drive, where errors were detected.

[Soviet_Genius]

Meh, I don't really care if the hard drive breaks, I'm not going to store anything on it that's important or anything.

[Broni]

I understand, but it may explain your current problems.

[Soviet_Genius]

Alright so I gave up on that problem for a while. Today I looked at it again... It seems the RAM is failing, not the hard drive. Memtest86 starts reporting endless errors as soon as it starts. Anyone know where I might find PC133 RAM? I tried cleaning the contacts on the RAM and putting it into different slots...same thing happens. 

[drmsucks]

Alright so I gave up on that problem for a while. Today I looked at it again... It seems the RAM is failing, not the hard drive. Memtest86 starts reporting endless errors as soon as it starts. Anyone know where I might find PC133 RAM? I tried cleaning the contacts on the RAM and putting it into different slots...same thing happens. 

Amazon U.S. has it...don't know about Canada.

[Soviet_Genius]

Anybody have any useless ones laying around? I'll pay for shipping lol. Also what about ebay?

[drmsucks]

Also what about ebay?

Sure...take a look.

[BC_Programmer]

I recently tried to  replace the memory in my old K6-2. I found the PC133 memory it needed, surprisingly- at a local London Drugs.

Maybe try a few big box stores, any small PC repair outlets, etc.