Planetarion Forums

Seth Mace · 8 Jul 2005, 10:58

Well, it seems strange to me;P

Ive windows XP and when you start the PC you get the black windows splash screen, the one with the blue bar scroll back & forth. Well as this screen appears it suddenly freezes (so that you can see just a faint outline of it on the montior and I need to restart the PC with things working fine after that.

This has happened a few times when i go to start my PC from cold, ive latest virus scanner which was fine but ive a feeling its something to do with my hardware (im pessimistic like that;D).

Anyone any ideas?

Spec: 350wat PSU - KT4V mobo - Radeon Pro 9800 - Althon 2000+ XP - 30gig matrox - CDRW

Thermodynamics · 8 Jul 2005, 13:56

It sounds more like windows having been worn out. I'm loath to recommend such a thing, but the "repair" function on your XP CD might do the trick. Or a clean install.

Do you have a login screen? If not, it could be you have so much stuff on your desktop and so many "background applications" starting up, that your computer just can't handle it.

I came home yday and my computer was off, nobody had been in my room, and my USDM logs didnt say any of my fans had stopped so PC had been shut down by USDM or anything. Very Odd.

Seth Mace · 8 Jul 2005, 17:07

I do have a login screen yes and i havent reinstalled windows since i got the PC, like 2 years ago

Is that bad?:/

djbass · 9 Jul 2005, 09:30

It's very probable that a device driver or system file is damaged. As far as I know standard apps & processes don't load until at least the logon screen.

The problem with XP over previous versions of windows is that you can't easily weed out the offending file. You can start in safe mode and go from there, but more often than not it's something critical that wont even allow you to reach safe mode.

Sometimes it can be due to HDD problems, since at least for now you say you can start the machine after a couple resets or such then I would do the following:

run 'chkdsk c: /R' just to make sure the file structure on your machine is still in tact.
then, run 'sfc /scannow' with your windows XP cd in the drive, it'll go through all your crucial system files and make sure none are currupted and replace if necessary. Doing this will at least divert a major crash from happening.

Seth Mace · 9 Jul 2005, 11:44

Cheers dj, ill try that