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XP Home is freezing

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by red dragoon 1 view

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My customer has Windows XP on her computer. What's happening is that when it gets to the Welcome screen and beyond, it totally freezes. The effect is only temporary, sometimes lasting for a few minutes. I have tried looking for viruses, unusual software, hardware/driver conflicts. I have also booted into Safe Mode; it appears to be okay in that, but I may be wrong. It is very difficult to pinpoint this because it doesn't happen every time. There are no error messages, and I checked the monitor, no processes taking up the cpu resources. The mouse and keyboard become completely useless. I have never seen this behavior before. I ran a full battery of tests on the cpu, mobo, ram, and hard drive.

9 replies

by tjc

I had this type of problem once - the anti-virus once a month would try to update during boot up but the internet was not running and would cause the lock up - so I unisntalled - I can't remember the anti-virus program but I do know it was NOT norton or mcafee and not pccillin - I wish I could remember - but anyway good luck.

by wcp

Indeed, a problem like this would take a long time to find any cause.

When you said ?it gets to the Welcome screen and beyond?, I assume the ?beyond? means after the Welcome screen but BEFORE the desktop being fully loaded. If this is not what you meant, please post a comment.

This could be due to hardware (HW), Windows, drivers, or startup applications (I think I covered it all).

The following steps might help. After each step, observe if the freezing occurs. You may have to turn the computer on and off numerous times to be certain if the freezing occurs or not.
If it does not, the cause was found.
If it does, go to the next step.

First, disable all startup programs.
Second, remove all nonessential HW (FD, ZIP drive, NIC, modem, sound, firewire, USB, CD-ROM, DVD, CD-RW, and so on).
Third, replace the video card (unless onboard video).
Fourth, do BIOS flash if new one is available.
Fifth, clean install Windows in a spare HD.
Last, now we know for sure the problem is due to essential HW (RAM, CPU, or motherboard). Replace one at a time to find the culprit.

I do not know any other way to do this.

Good luck.

by pierrejamme

wcb has the right idea i think. Video cards come in defferent voltage requirements. If your mother board supplies 3 volts and it needs 5 volts for example then you will see this. If you have a cheap pci video card give it a try if you don't know the voltages.

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