Computer refuses to boot
I was viewing a streaming movie the other night when suddenly everything locked up. I rebooted and decided to play a game and a short time later, same problem. I got as far as the XP logo screen on the reboot when everything froze solid again.
I was viewing a streaming movie the other night when suddenly everything locked up. I rebooted and decided to play a game and a short time later, same problem. I got as far as the XP logo screen on the reboot when everything froze solid again. Now, I can't get to square one as it steadfastly refuses to boot at all.
I've had the hardware tested at my local Fry's Electronics outlet and processor (AMD Athalon XP 1800+), mobo (ECS K7S5A Pro), and video card (GeForce2 MMX400) all appear to be sound. My OS - XP Pro - is installed in the first partition of my Western Digital 40GB HDD (split into roughly two equal parts) and the paging file is in a tiny partition at the head of the second HDD a 10GB Maxtor. My single stick of RAM (Kingston DDR2100 512MB) also checked out okay.
I'm fresh out of ideas as far as getting this thing back on its feet again so I have come here to seek the advice of the Zen Masters. What do you suggest as the best course of action?
I've had the hardware tested at my local Fry's Electronics outlet and processor (AMD Athalon XP 1800+), mobo (ECS K7S5A Pro), and video card (GeForce2 MMX400) all appear to be sound. My OS - XP Pro - is installed in the first partition of my Western Digital 40GB HDD (split into roughly two equal parts) and the paging file is in a tiny partition at the head of the second HDD a 10GB Maxtor. My single stick of RAM (Kingston DDR2100 512MB) also checked out okay.
I'm fresh out of ideas as far as getting this thing back on its feet again so I have come here to seek the advice of the Zen Masters. What do you suggest as the best course of action?
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Did they look for hardware conflicts in device manager? Sometimes some motherboards and/or hardware devices can't or do not like to share IRQ's or interrupts. This is especially true with sharing the video card resourses with the audio card. If you have any card plugged into the first PCI slot next to the AGP then most likely you have a problem there. Bad RAM causes this too, but your RAM checks out. If you have an Audigy or Audigy 2 sound card this will happen without the absolute proper setup with your BIOS and motherboard.
Remove extraneous hardware (sound card, NIC, etc) and leave just video support on the system. Boot up, and see if it comes up. If it does, add one piece of hardware back in at a time until you find the failure point. Also, see if you can update the BIOS of the mobo (if it can be done with a DOS floppy, that is). I would also remove the 10GB harddrive during the first boot sequence. I have had old drives cause lockups in the past during boot because they died (and you didn't indicate if the harddrives were tested with the other equipment).
Everything but the video card had already been removed so I went ahead and toof the 2nd drive out of the equation as well as the the slave CD burner. The 10GB Maxtor had been replaced under warranty once about a year ago, for what that's worth. After employing your suggestions the system still is lost in the dark somewhere - reboot fails again. Where to go from here? A little dynamite?!
Don't know bud. I would get a hold of someone else's video card, or maybe even check out the PSU and see if the current one is flaking out. Can you try installing XP on the 10GB disk and see how it runs? It doesn't seem like it would be the OS (this is typical of a hardware problem, and this can help determine if the 40GB disk is going out) but it might be worth a shot.
Hi Just curious,
Recently, before this happened, had you updated any drivers or changed any hardware?
If so try using the "Last Known Good Configuration" option (from the F8 menu option during startup).
Also have you checked if "Safe Mode" or "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" work? Just curious...
You could also give the XP CD disk a try (to repair the install)...
Recently, before this happened, had you updated any drivers or changed any hardware?
If so try using the "Last Known Good Configuration" option (from the F8 menu option during startup).
Also have you checked if "Safe Mode" or "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" work? Just curious...
You could also give the XP CD disk a try (to repair the install)...
