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PC Locks Up After Booting

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by williams887

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I have a computer running Win 2000 that locks up shortly after booting up. It usually locks up after I try opening a program or installing drivers. I've checked the cards and connections and everything seems ok. Any suggestions.

5 replies

by thechas

You likely have a wrong or improperly installed driver.

Boot into 'safe-mode' and check device manager for driver errors.

Set the video to a 'standard' VGA, and boot back into normal mode.

You need to install drivers in a specific order to have everything function correctly.
I follow the following sequence:

Mass storage controller (if not using chip-set IDE controller)
Chip-set drivers for the motherboard.
DirectX if required for the video driver.
Video driver.
Other plug-in cards.
Sound Card driver.

Sometimes, you need to drop back to a 'basic' configuration (video and drives) to get the system to behave.
Then, add plug-in cards 1 at a time until every thing is installed.
I recommend performing at least 1 clean bootafter each driver is installed prior to shutting down to add cards in.

Another possibility, is that you have bad or incompatible memory installed.
Just because the RAM passes the POST test, does not mean it will function properly in Windows.

Chas

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