Starting Windows... crashes

[XzenoX]

A long long time ago the computer ran win2k pro peacefully without any problems, than one day it started crashing at the screen with the blue bar progressing in the boot, it reaches the end, flashes the screen, than stops there (the blue bar stops also)

A week ago after having windows reinstalled, it still did the same thing but then the hard drive died making me lose lots of stuff. I got a new hard drive, reinstalled windows, and it still does the same thing.

I have a Asus P3v Motherboard supporting AGP 4x with an Asus V3800 TNT2 video card, 32 megs, 640mb of rams PC133, i have installed the VIA 4 in 1 latest drivers and SP2.

It does so either when i shutdown and start, or just in a plain restart.

Any ideas/suggestions or just point me out to a discussion regarding it that i would had missed, tnx.

 

[hyperionsix]

I have experienced this same issue on four software loads out of approximately fifteen 2K installations. I have yet to narrow it down to a specific cause. However, I have experienced your issue after installing a new motherboard and a new cd-rom. My poin is this, don't rule out your hardware as the problem even if it's on the compatibitliy listing. On one ocassion the processor was the problem.
I have been successful when encountering your issue by reloading the software and not alterning the hardware configuration. Before going in so deep though you might check/reset your BIOS settings.

 

[XzenoX]

So you suggest checking my BIOS, but for what should i look to ? Since it was working fine before and suddenly started i doubt it would be the BIOS, i don't recall changing things in there very often, i read in an other thread that it might be ACPI that i should disable in the BIOS.
Tomorrow i'll be installing all the updates offered on microsoft.com for windows 2000 since i haven't had the time to do it yet, so let's see what this gives.

Tnx

 

[XzenoX]

I just though about it when reading a post in win95/98 forum saying that his windows did not boot at all because of a possible bad driver: i recall that befor it started doing *it* the first times, after the re-install and after the drive died that i installed Detonator XP (the last one for win2kpro)

That is the ONLY software i installed the 3 times, could it be that ? because i checked as stated above and did not see anything *odd* or *wrong* in my BIOS and before reseting it, i'd like to test every possible thing. I'll go see the NVIDIA website to see if they say something about such a thing.

 

[XzenoX]

Found the problem:
Detonator XP

Had a friend with Windows XP with same video card and mother board, and he was having troubles booting as well, so i installed the detonator that comes with his windows XP and it works fine up to now (been 1 month now) did same thing on my computer a week after and it works great, only thing is, Direct3D doesn't work in some games, but heck who cares, Direct3D is so sloppy on my computer anyway that DirectDraw and OpenGL are both faster ^_^

Ciao + Thanks