Not your average startup problem...

[who515]

Whatup party people,
I'm guessing this is run-of-the-mill corruption, but I'm not sure where. This is what happens: I have a dual-boot machine, both OS's are XP pro. Each OS is on it's own hard drive. Every once in a while, what will happen is that when it boots, it will not go past the initial splash screen, the one with just the logo and the progress bar under it. The progress bar just loops around, but there's no activity. This has happened on both installations of xp, as well as previous builds that I've installed on the pc. Also, once the issue occurs and it's stuck at the splash screen, I found that I have to turn the power off- If I hit the reset button, it won't get past the bios, it'll just stay at the hard drive detection part of the bios (It does display them correctly though). I tried various tshooting steps, but the only thing that fixes it is booting into safe mode then reinstalling the service pack. So I'm thinking something is getting corrupted, or something is changing. As far as something changing goes, I have no idea; I've seen this happen even though I've done no changes of any kind, it has happened just booting up in the morning. Maybe it's video corruption, but I've never had to reinstall the video driver, just the service pack. So, anyone else seen this problem? Anyone got any ideas?

System specs:
Clone pc built by me
P4 1.4 ghz processor
Intel 850gb mobo
768 megs rambus ram
Ati radeon 9700 pro vid card
Sound blaster pci512 sound card
Hard drive 0 is a western digital 20 gig
Hard drive 1 is a western digital 80 gig

 

[bcastner]

I am not going to comment as to why you have setup the machine the way you have, but this earlier thread bears directly on how to resolve your boot issues: thread779-545582 your BIOS permits the use of a function key at boot to select alternative boot devices, I would use that feature if it was my machine.

Best.
Bill

 

[who515]

Hi, thanks for responding so quickly
The problem is not with setting up a dual boot machine, I know how to do that and it works fine, I'm just looking for possible reasons as to what might be getting corrupted that results in the problem described.

 

[bcastner]

As a reasonable guess, either the power settings in BIOS and/or Control Panel, Power Options (or Device Manager, or right-click a blank area of the Desktop) are not set appropriately; or Windows mis-guessed the correct power model during setup.

You can test this by typing: Start, Run, shutdown -f -s
If that works, Windows correctly guessed the advanced power features of your computer. Your problem is a slow or stuck process to close. Look at Task Manager for open processes, and configure using MSCONFIG.

If, however, the situation is the same:

As you have two installations to play with, select one as the victim and start the machine with the XP install CD as the boot device. Ignore the first request to repair, select install, and agree to the upgrade with repair.

Now the key: when the install prompts for SCSI or RAID drivers by hitting F6, hit F5. Select the Standard PC unimodel. Complete the install. You should then re-visit the Windows Update site to make you service packs and hotfixes current.

Then try the reboot sequence. If it works

 

[linney]

Perhaps it something like this, or just a loose or dirty connection inside.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...22%2BLBA%2Bauto%2Bhangs%2Bboot%2Bwindows%2Bxp