Boot \ Start Up problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alex
  • Start date Start date
A

Alex

Hi everyone

I have a Windows XP Pro + SP1 based PC which I built over
a year ago, and I'm currently experiencing the following
problems when I switch no my PC from cold (i.e. PC has
been shut down and switched off at the mains for at least
2 hours):

Switch On PC from cold
Monitor has a black screen and can't determine whether the
signal is analogue or digital, and the PC itself gets
stuck in a continuous initialisation loop of all the
CD\DVD drives and the hard drive. The restart and the
power buttons do not work; I have to turn the mains off to
restart the PC.

Restart 1
Motherboard splash screen appears on the monitor
(sometimes repeats above) and system hangs (pressing the
DEL button does not enter bios setup)

Restart 2
Motherboard splash screen appears, PC hangs but this time
the DEL key allows you to enter the bios settings. Check
the bios settings to find they have changed, not always,
the same changes but it appears that RAID and Boot
settings are affected the most. Change the settings and
Exit. This has happened that much since changing the
bios, generally just go straight to exit and save.

Restart 3
Splash screen appears followed by, safe mode selection
screen. Sometimes, choosing start in Safe Mode or Start
Normally will work and windows will start.

However, what's happening now is from the safe mode
selection screen it tries to boot windows and then
displays a blue screen stating that there has been a fatal
driver conflict (not sure how this can be the problem
seeing the PC has been working fine for over a year) and
the system freezes.

Restart 4
After the system freeze the PC boots to the safe mode
selection screen and freezes as soon as I select an
option. Even if I wait for the timer to hit zero it
freezes.

Several Restarts Later
The PC finally loads windows, but the problems haven't
finished there. If I have the auto restart feature turned
on then the PC has a tendency to restart every 30 minutes
or so. If I turn off the auto restart feature then the
PC, blue screens with the fatal driver error. However,
now that PC has warmed up it appears to restart without
any problems.


Solutions tried so far with no joy:
At present I have upgraded the motherboard bios as
recommended by the manufacturer.
I have deleted the C Drive Partition, re-created the
partition, formatted C and reinstalled XP from new.

No new hardware has been added since building the PC and
the last software added was back in November last year.

My personal thoughts are it's a hardware failure, either
Power Supply, Motherboard or Graphics card. I can't see
how it can be a driver conflict issue at this stage of the
game; surely a driver conflict would have raised its head
sooner?

I'd be most grateful if someone could give me some hints
as to where to go next. Do I start replacing hardware,
and if so what?

Should I install my old Windows 2000 instead?

Any hints, tips or guidance of any sort will be gratefully
received.

regards

Alex
 
I had a similar problem when dell sent me a bad ram
chip. They sent me a chip different in size than the one
on the motherboard (use to be they had to be matched).
When I tried to start the machine, it got stuck in a loop
asking to continue with windows or enter set-up.
Interesting thing was it would never let you enter the
set-up. It did the same thing as if you continued in
windows; it would go to the windos start-up get to a
certain point and go back to the screen asking if I
wanted to go to set-up or continue in Windows.

Dell sent me another chip and everything starts ok.
Don't know if this will help, but here it is.
 
Hi Nick and Kyle

Kyle:
I have 4 X 512Mb ram blocks, I removed three blocks and
tried booting up the PC but the problem remained. I then
repeated the process for the remaining 3 blocks, with no
affect.


Nick:
If I hold the power button down for 5 seconds the PC does
shut down, any clues?


During one of the fatal blue screens today, it actually
mentioned a couple of files, ntfs.sys and classpnp.sys
and it also stated that there was a page fault in a
nonpaged area.

All guessed gratefully received

Alex
 
Alex said:
Hi Nick and Kyle

Kyle:
I have 4 X 512Mb ram blocks, I removed three blocks and
tried booting up the PC but the problem remained. I then
repeated the process for the remaining 3 blocks, with no
affect.


Nick:
If I hold the power button down for 5 seconds the PC does
shut down, any clues?


During one of the fatal blue screens today, it actually
mentioned a couple of files, ntfs.sys and classpnp.sys
and it also stated that there was a page fault in a
nonpaged area.

All guessed gratefully received

Alex
Click to expand...
A lot of stuff here to digest, but same problem with a format and
reinstall..?
Looks like you elimated the ram.
I have had bad CPU do all of the above.

Bad Cpu: during fresh install, lock up, corrupt date, bad registry and never
the same thing twice.

Can you monitor your cpu temp..?

I would pull all card sept video and see what you get.
Reseat your video.
Swap power supply and the video.
I will reread your post aft dinner and see if I can thing of anything else.
It's nice to have loads of junk pc stuff around for stuff like this. Later
on.

 
Hi Nick

I've been looking into ntfs.sys failures on different
forums and the MS knowledge base, it appears there are
three possible causes:

1. Bad memory (it doesn't say whether Graphic card memory
can cause the problem though)
2. Bad Clusters in the HDD
3. Corrupt MBR

I think I've ruled out the RAM but just in case I've just
downloaded a memory tester, will keep informed.

According to Norton Diskdoctor and WinXP dick check, I
have 0 bad clusters in my HDD.

Apparently problem 3 can only be solved one of three ways

1. using the Repair facility in Win XP to rename the
ntfs.sys file and replace it with a new one.
2. Reparition the whole HDD, in my case thats 4 drives
and when I did the reinstall I only repartitioned the C
drive.
3. Use GDisk to uninstall and reinstall the MBR.


As for CPU temp, I monitor this all the time.

CPU is a P4 2.4MHz and it runs at low load at a constant
39C and at high load at a constant 49C

Motherboard temperate remains constant at around 31C.

The one hot spot in the PC is the graphics card, this
runs at 45C at low load and upto 70C at high load.

Will keep you informed and look forward to hearing your
thoughts

Alex
 
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