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XP Hangs during Boot up

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by Member 25066530

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I have been having an ongoing problem with both cold starts and rebooting XP. The computer gets to the point where the XP logo is on the screen and the moving bars are going from left to right and then they stop. No matter how long I wait (even overnight) the computer never finishes booting up. I must power down the machine in order to restart. I can boot up in safe mode and have turned off all of the items in startup, and the system will still hang when I reboot. Sometimes it will take ten or more trys before I can get it to complete the boot cycle. Therefore, I tend to keep it running all the time. When I can get it up again, I have run Norton 2003 utilities and all of the windows files check out ok, I run the antivirus and adaware 6. The computer checks out as clean. I have allowed all of the start up items to load and the computer will operate and reboot fine for several weeks through many reboots. Then suddenly, it will start this behavior again. I am at a loss.... Any ideas?

3 replies

by gungnir

It sounds like possibly a system service is causing problems. You can check in the event log - Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Log and check to see if any errors are being logged during startup.

I would also suggest using MSCONFIG to clean boot your system, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310353 . A Safe Boot will unload almost every system service and driver. A clean boot will help you determine if the issue is with standard Windows Services or with Services from installed applications.

by wcp

I have a hunch that this is a hardware (HW) problem.

Open the case and make sure all components are plugged tight. Make sure your CPU fan is installed correctly.
If this does not resolve your problem, unplug all non-onboard HW (e.g. NIC, Sound, USB, Firewire, Modem, and so on).

If the problem still persists, you need to check Power supply, RAM(s), CPU, and Motherboard (MB).
Replace one HW at a time with a known good replacement and observe if the problem disappears.

If you do not have any (more) replacement and the problem is still there, you may have to take your computer to a local computer store and have them to troubleshoot.
Before you do this, clean install Windows in a spare HD (if you have one) just to make sure it?s HW related problem.

by power_serge

I had a similar issue with XP on a new PC, and it turned out to be hardware related. The issue appeared to be sporadic, but occurred whenever the printer was switched on at the time of start up. The issue related to USB boot up configuration. Try checking your system's bootup config in the system set-up utility at the time of boot up to ensure there are no conflicts with USB devices.

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