I'm writing this on my second comp. The troubles are with my main comp.

This morning i turned on my computer and it hang at Windows start screen (the one with the moving blocks). I could not restart it with ctrl alt del so i turned it off with the powerbutton. When the menu turned up to choose how i would like to start Windows i let it start up normally..wich it wouldn't, it resulted in an autoreboot returning to that menu again. Now i'm working in safemode (admin account). Right now i'm doing a virusscan but doubt it's a virus really..next thing i'll try will be checkdisk.

This sounds like the same problem i had a few weeks ago. Only then i had done a sysrestore wich failed, in the end i couldn't do anything anymore and got the message: Could not find system.sav, or system.sav corrupted. I took it to repairshop and they formatted C: (i was hoping they could fix it without doing that) and built in an extra cooler, it's still not clear what caused all this.

Any of you have an idea on how to fix this weird problem, or what could cause this?

OS: Win XP Pro, SP2

My guess would be a corrupt registry? I remember having a similar problem, but as far as I can recall I don't think I could even get into safe mode, and like you I couldn't perform a successful system restore. The method on the Microsoft site didn't seem to work either.

I think I managed to fix it by proceeding to reinstall XP again, whereupon it detected that it was already installed and offered to repair it instead of reinstalling.

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Originally posted by Sunshine
This morning i turned on my computer and it hang at Windows start screen (the one with the moving blocks). I could not restart it with ctrl alt del so i turned it off with the powerbutton. When the menu turned up to choose how i would like to start Windows i let it start up normally..wich it wouldn't, it resulted in an autoreboot returning to that menu again. Now i'm working in safemode (admin account). Right now i'm doing a virusscan but doubt it's a virus really..next thing i'll try will be checkdisk.

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Originally posted by Sunshine
I'm writing this on my second comp. The troubles are with my main comp.

This morning i turned on my computer and it hang at Windows start screen (the one with the moving blocks). I could not restart it with ctrl alt del so i turned it off with the powerbutton. When the menu turned up to choose how i would like to start Windows i let it start up normally..wich it wouldn't, it resulted in an autoreboot returning to that menu again. Now i'm working in safemode (admin account). Right now i'm doing a virusscan but doubt it's a virus really..next thing i'll try will be checkdisk.

This sounds like the same problem i had a few weeks ago. Only then i had done a sysrestore wich failed, in the end i couldn't do anything anymore and got the message: Could not find system.sav, or system.sav corrupted. I took it to repairshop and they formatted C: (i was hoping they could fix it without doing that) and built in an extra cooler, it's still not clear what caused all this.

Any of you have an idea on how to fix this weird problem, or what could cause this?

OS: Win XP Pro, SP2

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reboot your pc, keep pressing F8 key till you get the menu that gives you option of  safemod, select command prompt, Run 'Scanreg' and restore your registry to a date when it was working fine.

I wonder how can the registry become corrupted from one day to another? All was fine yesterday

I seriously don't want to reinstall Windows every two weeks It took many many hours to reinstall all my programs again...and i haven't even put all back yet..i now install when i come across one i need that i forgot.

Animal: i don't know.

Shine: will try what you said...all i can get into now is safemode.

System sotres you registry info at periodic intervels....Try what I said and see if it works

Do you have a "Last Known Good Configuration" option. I don't know what the problem is, but the lastgood restore could work

I do recommend the repair install, it only changes system files and it even keeps your programs so you won't have to reinstall them again.
A google search for "XP repair install" returns lots of useful info.

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Originally posted by rav0
Do you have a "Last Known Good Configuration" option. I don't know what the problem is, but the lastgood restore could work

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Originally posted by John Anderton
* John Anderton consoles sunshine if she has to re-install everything again

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Originally posted by rav0
Do you have a "Last Known Good Configuration" option. I don't know what the problem is, but the lastgood restore could work

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Originally posted by Sunshine
I seriously don't want to reinstall Windows every two weeks It took many many hours to reinstall all my programs again...and i haven't even put all back yet..i now install when i come across one i need that i forgot.

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* John Anderton consoles sunshine if she has to re-install everything again

Just like yesterday when i turned on my comp it hang again on startup screen (with the blocks). Doing the same like yesterday did not solve it (safemode/AV scan), there was no virus found. I ran chkdsk and there were no bad sectors found either.

So then i chose "last good configuration", this made things even worse as i now can't even get into safemode anymore

This is seriously the worst and weirdest problem i've ever come across. I guess there's nothing left to do now but a reinstall. But if any of you could tell me what could cause this strange behaviour, please let me know. I'd hate to face the same thing every few weeks

Anyway If you format your hardrive it should put the registry back to normal.

Now if i could only get into the setup from CD...it boots up...i see blue screen loading things then it goes on to black screen with only blinking cursor

No "Welcome to setup"

I'm running a memorytest atm, i seriously have no idea whats wrong with this thing..

I think it's a hardware problem there, no reason why it could not load the setup, itself.

Is your XP disk kind of clean from the back?  If it's scratched too much maybe?  This is a really weird situtation.  Did you ever do something, install?  New hardware?

I expect it to be a hardware problem aswell. No new hardware since those repairguys formatted and reinstalled (about 2 weeks ago).

The Windows CD is brandnew, only got it like a month ago (Genuine Advantage CD). Repairguys managed to install from it so it can't be the CD.

Question remains: what is it and how to find out

Had same prob and the only to fix it, after hours of tests and trying different whatnot plus hours on the phone with M$ too, the only thing left to do was to reformat. If you have a dvd burner drive, or a second hard drive, i'd recommend getting Norton Ghost, so u can create an image of yur C:\ drive and store it on a back up drive, it'll turn a 4h installation into a 1h restore, plus, Ghost can fit a lil over 6Gbs on one 4.7Gb dvd disc. And if u keep having to re-install, then yur hdd is busted, and it's most likely the write/read head that's damaged (y you wont find bad sectors on your disk). Hope this helps.

How's this for weird..i ran the memory test for over an hour, it found nothing and all of a sudden windows boots up normally again

I'm starting to think it's the RAM wich is working fine one min and not the next..if tomorrow the same happens i will see if switching the two RAM sticks makes any difference.

chkdsk /r c: returned that the volume is not damaged.

i once had similar problems, and it was the modem (if you have one), try that! although i think the symptoms suggest a hardware problem not nessarily modem or RAM, try to remove most of ur PCI cards one at a time to test.

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Originally posted by zaidgs
i once had similar problems, and it was the modem (if you have one), try that! although i think the symptoms suggest a hardware problem not nessarily modem or RAM, try to remove most of ur PCI cards one at a time to test.

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maybe u should try to swap those two cards between the 'main' and 'second' computers, and check if the problems will be exchanged too or not.... if the thing gets serious and annoying, try swapping hard disks, so that u can make sure if its the hard disk or someother faulty hardware....

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Originally posted by zaidgs
maybe u should try to swap those two cards between the 'main' and 'second' computers, and check if the problems will be exchanged too or not.... if the thing gets serious and annoying, try swapping hard disks, so that u can make sure if its the hard disk or someother faulty hardware....

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*bump*

The problem has reared up its ugly head again

I found out that it doesn't matter what i do (AV Scan, defrag, chkdsk), but that i need to do something before my comp can boot up Windows normally. The problem is only there when i first start up my computer (in the morning), once it is able to start up normally all's fine (reboot doesn't have those probs).

So it seems like something needs to warm up, but what (processor)? Anyone ever came across the same problem?

This problem occurs every day now, i fear my comp might not start up at all soon.

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Originally posted by Sunshine
So it seems like something needs to warm up, but what (processor)?

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This happend to me once when i deleted a regestry file accidently lol, do you remember deleteing anything you didnt know of?

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Originally posted by rav0
The processor warms up, but it can run healthily at extremely cold temperatures (dry ice cold).

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The capacitors on the computer store a bit of charge even once the computer is turned off, so if it was just turned off, turning on the computer is different from leaving it a day since it was turned off. I don't know whether it is relevant here <-- hope that makes sense
I remember someone posting about the residual charge somewhere it was relevant, but I can't remember what it was.

From the effects, I can't tell what part of the computer is causing problems. I guessed it might have been the RAM but you daid you swapped that. I'd take it to a computer shop and ask them to test everything, because it is most likely hardware related.

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Buy a pack of blank DVDs and start backing up furiously just incase it dies completely.

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Originally posted by evil_panda
This happend to me once when i deleted a regestry file accidently lol, do you remember deleteing anything you didnt know of?

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If possible, try to replace your PSU (using the one from the other PC maybe?) and see if it isn't that which is causing the troubles (although it is a remote possebility, it still is a possebility as a cold boot requires far more power than a warm boot). Dunno if this will solve the problem though, even if this was the cause, as parts of Windows (registry) might have been damaged in the process of booting up/manually turning of/etc.

(A simple 300-400W PSU doesn't cost that much, €25 at the most. A lot cheaper than to buy some RAM -just for testing purposes-)


Note: Chkdsk isn't the best thing to check your HDD; it is the quickest, but certainly not the best. It doesn't perform decent tests and often doesn't reconize "unhealthy" sectors. In fact, it can even cause bad sectors on a not so healthy systems in some situations. If you truely wanna scan your HDD for errors, use a 3rd party HDD scantool (eg: Symantec's).

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Originally posted by Sunshine
This sounds like the same problem i had a few weeks ago. Only then i had done a sysrestore wich failed, in the end i couldn't do anything anymore and got the message: Could not find system.sav, or system.sav corrupted. I took it to repairshop and they formatted C: and built in an extra cooler, it's still not clear what caused all this.

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Originally posted by rav0
Buy a pack of blank DVDs and start backing up furiously just incase it dies completely.

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Originally posted by Sunshine

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The capacitors on the computer store a bit of charge even once the computer is turned off, so if it was just turned off, turning on the computer is different from leaving it a day since it was turned off. I don't know whether it is relevant here <-- hope that makes sense
I remember someone posting about the residual charge somewhere it was relevant, but I can't remember what it was.

From the effects, I can't tell what part of the computer is causing problems. I guessed it might have been the RAM but you daid you swapped that. I'd take it to a computer shop and ask them to test everything, because it is most likely hardware related.

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I ran a memorytest wich showed nothing. I have not replaced nor swapped the RAM after talking to some ppl askin if RAM gets read in a certain sequence...like f.e. first what's in slot 1, then slot 2...

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Originally posted by Sunshine
My thoughts still go towards the RAM, but i can't possibly go buy some ram sticks just for the purpose of testing. That's why i'd like to know for sure what is causing all this.

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Originally posted by CookieRevised

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Originally posted by rav0
Buy a pack of blank DVDs and start backing up furiously just incase it dies completely.

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She can connect the HDD to another PC and access it like that. You don't need to backup everything.

An OS not booting up doesn't mean you lost your data. The data is still there, only the OS you used to access that data can't be started. So simply use another OS (aka another PC) to access it.

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Originally posted by rav0

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Originally posted by CookieRevised

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Originally posted by rav0
Buy a pack of blank DVDs and start backing up furiously just incase it dies completely.

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She can connect the HDD to another PC and access it like that. You don't need to backup everything.

An OS not booting up doesn't mean you lost your data. The data is still there, only the OS you used to access that data can't be started. So simply use another OS (aka another PC) to access it.

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I know that, but if Sunshine had her files and OS on the one volume, and the OS ceased to be usable, formatting that volume to erase the existing OS would also erase her files.

The hard disk could still be used from another, working OS, but it would need to be on a computer with space for the hard disk with the dead OS on it, and even if one was found, it is more of a hassle copying files like this than burning the files before the OS died.

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
and Sunshine does have a second PC she can use. In that situation swapping HDD's is the quickest and safest way to backup..

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Originally posted by Sunshine
Remains one problem if i was to do that. All HDDs in this PC are completely NTFS and the second computer i could use runs on WinME, so it won't recognize NTFS disks (blah i regret setting the first partition on my second HD to NTFS instead of Fat32 now). There's also no way i could get WinXP to run on my second computer as it doesn't meet the specs...

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If the hard drive doesn't feel like responding properly, it could very well crash the bios or even the operating system if it tries to access it, so that could be the problem.

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Originally posted by Sunshine
if one stick is faulty i got 256 of 512 left)? If my RAM is to blame why does it still say i got 512 when i go to system?

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Ok, some more testing done.

Today i disconnected the fan on the HD rack, all booted up fine so it seems like this was the culprit (maybe the fan broke, i didn't look at that). Comp looks a bit slow, but that might be just me.

For those interested in looking at my comp, here are some pictures:
Inside
Frontside

My guess is that the HD cooler fan was drawing too much power at startup (from a cold boot), but when you warm booted, residue charge somewhere let the computer start normally. (this is something like where I remembered reading abot residual charge before)

It's only a 300 W PSU, and you have two hard disks, so that may have been the cause, but I don't know the ratings of everything, I just know that by comparison 300 W is weak, but maybe the fan is just faulty and drawing too much current.

PS now I wish I had a (decent) digital camera again .

PPS it looks like the exhaust fan is starving the CPU fan (pm me for more info).

PPPS that's a cool CPU heatsink.

PPPPS the northbridge heatsink at an angle looks cool as well.

PPPPPS mmm ... red mobo

PPPPPPS lots of PSs in this post