Help with bootup problem

Published on April 13, 2005 By ama02 In Personal Computing

For several weeks now, whenever I turn on my PC, it freezes up during the boot process. Not always at the exact same spot either...blue welcome screen, black screen, or just as my desktop starts to load. I'm forced to do a hard shutdown...then it usually boots up okay after that. It only happens on a cold boot (after it's been off for a while). I've had a couple of different techie folks test it...first one had it freeze up just trying to get into BIOS settings, he eventually replaced the processor chip. The other person (more recently) was not able to reproduce any of the problems, said it booted up fine.

It's an older (4 years old) Gateway desktop AMD Athlon 1.5 GHz (was 1.1), 640 MB RAM, nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra card (with latest driver), Windows XP Home SP2 (all updates), basic SoundBlaster Live card. I run WindowBlinds and ODock, I have installed (but not running) DesktopX 2.x? and CursorXP. I did have SD Central installed, but one of its auto-updates of itself messed up my systray so I uninstalled it.

Any ideas what is causing the bootup problem? Not sure if it's hardware or software related.

Comments

werewolf

on Apr 13, 2005

ooohhh, I've been testing my computer for the last 3 weeks for this very thing. I *usually* get all the way to my desktop and then it freezes after say 1 minute or so.

I've checked my RAM, no problems. All my drivers for everything are updated and I have the newest versions of everything.

I've run a full virus scan, Ad-Aware, Spybot and MS Antispyware scans...nothing.

I've been playing around with loading different apps at start up to see what happens.

I always have ZoneAlarm and AVG run.

Never freezes with just Windowblinds running. Windowblinds and Right Click=freeze, Windowblinds and Workshelf=freeze.

It's taking a long time (3 or 4 days per new setup) there are a jillion different combinations.

I will let you know if I nail anything down. Glad you brought this up...I was going to write all this after I was finished testing.

Corky_O

on Apr 13, 2005

ama02,

You could try a clean boot up, then test by adding processes and services one at a time (turn one on, reboot, see what happens - turn that one off, turn another on - repeat until you find the issue).

Instead of writing it down, here is the link to MS knowledge base article on how to perform a clean boot Link

Tedious job, but it may be the best way to be sure.

ama02

on Apr 13, 2005

Thanks for the quick reply

I have posted on another forum, and someone suggested it could be my power supply. It is the original one (something around 200 Watts), and I have since upgraded or added things (including the vid card and a new DVDRW). I am going to try replacing the power supply with a newer one (300 watts) and see if that clears up the problem. If not

I will try your process of elimination. Thanks for the help! I'll post back here in a few days.

Chris TH

on Apr 13, 2005

Sounds like hardware, especailly if you have to hard reset.

My first suspicions are:

Power Supply and/or power connections
Faulty RAM
Possible failing MoBo

The only convenient way to troubleshoot is to have some replacements handy and exchange one-by-one, each time with extensive and intensive loading of the system to stress it.

Not easily done if you only have the one, at-home system

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Chris TH

on Apr 13, 2005

Hah! You got in first

I have posted on another forum, and someone suggested it could be my power supply.

Weaksid

on Apr 13, 2005

Here is the power chart

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119585,pg,2,00.asp

ama02

on Apr 13, 2005

Here's a site that lets you select all your components, and adds up your total power consumption. Even though I had to guess on a couple of items, I came out with about 300 Watts, which is a bit more than my poor little power supply box was designed for.

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

Weaksid

on Apr 13, 2005

Now that was a site that I was looking for. It's bookmarked now

Thanks

Chris TH

on Apr 13, 2005

I came out with about 300 Watts

That'll be the problem, I feel pretty sure!

PurrBall

on Apr 17, 2005

My poor little 200W is taking 225W of hardware just fine. OR is it taking away speed?

ama02

on Apr 18, 2005

This is my follow-up post to my original one...I just got my CPU back, with a 500W power supply installed. I hooked everything back up to it, and booted.

That was smoothest, fastest, and most complete bootup I've seen on my old system! So it seems that the power supply was indeed the problem.

werewolf..I would recommend you compare your current power supply to your configuration's consumption on that website I linked to earlier. It it's a bit more, then consider getting a new power box.

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