At least I think thats what the problem is.

Anyway i'll start at the beginning. I purchased a Samsung writemaster
DVD burner and installed it with the relavent drivers off the samsung
website. Immediately after that blue screen errors started appearing on
startup. The error message was this:
BAD_POOL_CALLER
0x000000c2 (0x00000007, 0x00000cd4, 0x11111111, 0x818CAC48)

However this would only occur occasionally and as the DVD burner worked
fine when XP did load sucessfully I decided I could live with it...

A problem then occured where I couldn't access the admin account ( the
only account) due to an incorrect password. This I assumed was a virus
and rather than tackle it head on I opted for a more 'holistic'
approach. I reformatted the hard drive and attempted to install XP
again. However at the same point during XP setup (it says installing
devices) the same blue screen which before only appeared sporadically
now shows itself without fail evey time.
There is no chance of me altering settings from within windows.

Your help is VERY much appreciated!

I believe you Windows XP could not fully install itself due to user account password not being fully erased.

If you are able to attempt a full fresh installation, I would strongly recommend that you delete the partition during your initial setup. Just reformatting does not completely delete the Windows XP protected sector (the boot sector). Deleting the partition or FDISK should ensure that whatever is left from your previous files are free from protection.

Give that a try and let us know how it goes. There are ways to perform a Windows repair procedure but since you already started to reinstall your OS, I believe this would be the best way.

It is definetely the best choice to clean primary partition and reinstall.

It takes you only an hour or two to make necessary preparations, format and install fresh and problem free Windows. (Priority is, of course, to have original Win installation cd... )

MY friend once had a problem with non-legitimate copy od Win XP - every time he reinstalled it, there was an error and computer was full of viruses - after a few times he realized it was the installation cd.

Good luck with your computer. Hope it feels better soon.

thank you for reply i wll try this. bye