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!

Hi k2wl,
So.. you totally re-formatted the HD ( you didn't use the "restore" windows option by mistake?) ..and the same/ or similar BSD ("blue screen of death") problem is still happening ?? And you didn't/ haven't re-installed the DVD drivers again..yet...right?
This definite ly a Windows XP issue. The "generic" drivers in XP are not working with your DVD properly.
If you still have your old CD/dvd drive around (the one that used to work OK with Windows) .. put it back in & use it to re-install Windows again.
If that doesnt work.. then your Windows CD is "bad" OR you have some other hardware problem with the computer that you need to troubleshoot. Maybe your new DVD drive is bad.
Hope this helps
RGPHNX

thanks it works nicely.
bye

Topic resolved: thread closed.