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#1 (permalink) |
Crazy
Location: PA
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Anyone Experience these symptoms?
1. Boot PC
2. PC gets to Windows XP logo, and freezes right after the logo disappears. 3. Hit Restart button. 2. PC boots, goes to logon screen, and freezes again. 4. Hit Restart button again. 5. PC boots, goes to logon screen, I logon, and then it freezes just as the desktop starts to show. 6. Hit Restart button again, PC boots and runs normally, without a problem. It just started doing this, and I couldn't find a virus or anything, so I reformatted the machine, only to my dismay it didn't solve any problems at all. Could the CMOS battery be the culprit here? I'm curious because I've never replaced it, and the battery on the board is over a year old. Specs: OS: Windows XP PRO, SP2. Fully updated CPU: Intel P4 @ 3.2GHz RAM: 1.5 GB PC 2700 GFX: BFG 256 MB AGP 8x running Nvidea GEForce 6200 OC Chipset. Board: ASUS P4C800-E HDD: Maxtor 120 GB 7200RPM PATA PSU: 450W (I forget the brand) Running McAfee Internet security 2006, fully updated. I do not have any parts of the machine overclocked. Any help is appreciated, thank you all! ![]() |
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#2 (permalink) |
Addict
Location: Hoosier State
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How many sticks of RAM have you installed? 2 or 3? Leave only one stick and try to boot up. One of them might be faulty. If you have an air compressor, spray out the dust on the fans, power supply. If you have spare hard drive, try installing, booting from it. There are just too many varaiables in a PC and can all cause hang ups like your've described.
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#8 (permalink) |
Crazy
Location: PA
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I like the Bill Gates is to blame reason hahahaha.
Hmm... RAM eh? I noticed a couple other things today, when I tried to watch a DVD on the machine, it kept locking up as well, along with when I tried to play WarCraft III. I'll have to pull the RAM sticks out one by one and see what happens. Thanks everyone! ![]() |
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#9 (permalink) |
Tilted
Location: St. Louis
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I had a problem somewhat like this a month or so back, although only in a specialized case. Whenever I'd run a somewhat intensive 3D game (Half-Life 2, The Sims 2, even Civilization), the computer would lock up after a few minutes. After tearing my hair out trying all sorts of software solutions, I finally cracked open the case and took a look inside. Turned out the fan on my video card had bit the dust (heh), and the card was overheating and crapping out. Bought a new fan for 15 bucks, installed it, and no more problems.
Don't know if this applies here, as your problem seems more general, but I thought I'd throw it out there. It does definitely sound hardware related though. |
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#10 (permalink) |
Junkie
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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If you have a virus or spyware which is triggered on logon by a registry key (ie a computer setting)
...and that file has been removed by an antivirus program or similar ...then... you might see something like this. IMHO. If you believe this theory, I found a program called "Autoruns Utility" which is useful. "HijackThis" is also interesting. In my case with a similar problem - I was able to remove the offending entry by running in safe mode, or perhaps it was from another login account, I can't remember the exact details. |
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#14 (permalink) |
Junkie
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Ah. I just checked. Looks like I got it of www.sysinternals.com
They have a few neat utilities there by the way. Fairly technical site though (it's been around since early NT days). |
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#16 (permalink) |
Addict
Location: Hoosier State
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If you get your system up and running, try Sisoft Sandra and run the burn-in test for at least a 24 hour duration. Sounds like your system is fairly new with a fresh installation of Win XP. I'm still banking on one of the hardware components, RAM / Power Supply. Good luck.
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#17 (permalink) |
Crazy
Location: PA
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I'm going to give it a shot here. It will only boot in safe mode now, so the problem is getting worse progressively. If I can actually get it to boot and not lock up, which it is doing at random intervals now, I'll try to run a test on the RAM and see what's happening. I'm just using my laptop right now, and haven't had much time. This just hasn't been a good week for me, the PC died, and the engine decided to blow up in my car two days ago! *sigh*
![]() Thanks again to the TFP members ![]() |
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#20 (permalink) |
Junkie
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Is ok. I'm tired also (after midnight here).
Some useful utilities to catch there are process explorer (it gives you a tree) - and heaps more than MS task manager. And... one or more of the filesystem monitors. I can't remember which I use - but occasionally I need to find out which files are open by what programs. Sysinternals was famous originally for NTFS4DOS.. back in the late 90s. Mind you, I think it was called NT internals back then. |
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#21 (permalink) |
<3 TFP
Location: 17TLH2445607250
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It could be a flakey Windows install, too. If a core system file gets corrupted, all kinds of strange things can happen to your system. Reinstall windows (even on top of itself). If there's still an issue, I'll toss in my vote for RAM.
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#22 (permalink) | |
beauty in the breakdown
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
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Quote:
__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." --Plato |
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#24 (permalink) |
Not so great lurker
Location: NY
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If the ram checks out, the next step that I would do is to try is to run a "chkdsk /r" I've seen a bad sector on the hd get randomly hit because of swap file usage usually causing lockups or blue screens (usually blue screens tho). Either way once you fix the ram, it's not a bad idea to let windows check out the files (especially the system files) to ttry to fix up the system without doing another reinstall.
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#26 (permalink) |
Very Insignificant Pawn
Location: Amsterdam, NL
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KrazyKracka, from your first post you indicate the PC takes a few minutes to stabilise. If you have memory that has to "heat up" before
it works, a memory test will not point to the problem. If you can run the test from DOS, quickly, it may show the memory problem. Let the PC completely cool down before testing. Good luck. |
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#27 (permalink) |
Crazy
Location: PA
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I must be a dumbass, I can't get this program to work (memtest86)
I don't have a floppy drive on this machine, nor do I have one anywhere in my apartment, but I can't get the damn thing to write to a CD for booting. *sigh*. is there a memtest86 for dummies anywhere? ![]() |
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#28 (permalink) |
Not so great lurker
Location: NY
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Assuming that you d/l the Iso image from here http://www.memtest86.com/#download0
I'm assuming that you got the zip version, then unzipped the iso image. After that you should just be able to burn the iso (in nero the option would be something like burn disk from image file). And then boot off the cd that you created. If something else is/isn't happening, just post and someone should be able to figure out what is wrong. |
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Tags |
experience, symptoms |
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