Windows ME hangs on startup

Verify that no hardware changes have happened. Thus being perhaps a modem or onboard sound device has been turned on. that shouldn?t be. If you verify that nothing in fact has changed you can have Win ME boot in boot logged mode. This will allow you to say yes or no to the startup options. There is a file located on your local c drive that contains your last boot, you can go over it and see where it stopped on the last boot. All of these are just tips one, some or none of these may help. Win ME is a beast of its own kind.. Good luck.

This could be due to hardware (HW) gone bad or driver(s) got corrupted.

Disconnect all not-on-board HW. If the problem disappears, connect one HW at a time to find the culprit and replace it.

If this does not resolve the problem, do System Restore (Start | Programs | System Tools | System Restore) to a date when everything worked O.K.

If this does not resolve the problem, you may have a motherboard (MB) problem. If you have a spare HD, clean install Windows in it. If the problem persists, the culprit got to be the MB.

In safe mode.
Checked Settings -> control panel -> system -> device manager and look for yellow circle with ! or ? in it. That would be the problem device!

Delete it and reload drivers from the OEM disk.

start in safe mode.
r-klik on my computer, go to properties, click on hardware, and then device manager.

check if you see a device with a problem.
remove that device and reboot.

Leopold

First concerning answer number 4. You won't really see hardware problems in safe mode because most of the drivers are not loaded. Also all drivers ever loaded for some devices will appear.

Go back into msconfig and put things back to the way they were. Re-enable system.ini and win.ini. Only disable things that are not needed and if there's anything in the run or load section of the win.ini file disable those. Since you can boot into safe mode and if you have the system restore feature enabled use that to go back to a point when the system worked.

Something's not fully installed or you have an install loop going. There's a hidden log file called detlog.txt. It is a record of detected hardware in the system. It may have info about what device is causing the trouble. The log is usually located on the root of the C drive. You need to enable the ability to see hidden and system files.