Incomplete boot-up

  • Thread starter Thread starter billurie
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billurie

Many times my XP/SP2 will boot to where all icons are
on desktop but get 'stuck': many applications not loaded,
no way to proceed other than recycle power. This can follow
completely normal operation and shut-down. I believe that
Microsoft has a KB article on this.....a link and advice
would be appreciated.
 
Thanks for the referral, Richard. The first one shown describes
the problem, but the solution doesn't work because Ctrl-Alt-Del
does not work when it only boots to showing icons. Nothing works
except interrupting power. Any further advice?
Click to expand...

It is worth a visit to the web site of your computer maker. Have a search
under the model that you have. It is not an HP of a certain age by any
chance? They had a run of mother board failures and offer replacements up to
next year. Some other makes may well have the same.
There is nothing like an intermittent fault to get ones hair out by the
roots!

Another Richard.
 
Richard said:
It is worth a visit to the web site of your computer maker. Have a search
under the model that you have. It is not an HP of a certain age by any
chance? They had a run of mother board failures and offer replacements up to
next year. Some other makes may well have the same.
There is nothing like an intermittent fault to get ones hair out by the
roots!

Another Richard.
Click to expand...
Richard, the machine is 3 years old, and I've been the only user
and know all of its ins and outs. It is indeed not an HP, but
an extremely reliable and tractable eMachines T2080. The computer maker,
however, is of the "one year warranty and then pay through the nose"
variety. I lived through the intermittents......and discovered that
tightening five loosely installed motherboard screws really made no
improvement. The worst was a MOLEX 4-pin power connection with an
intermittent. This sort of hanging boot-up appeared suddenly rather
recently and is now a frequent annoyance.......not the kind of thing
that an intermittent is likely to cause. It suggests to me, since
it happens before Windows loads any of the start-up applications, not
even the Task Manager, that it was a free gift along with some
Windows Update. I'm trying to analyze it logically. Keep making
suggestions; you always make sense.

Bill
 
Richard, the machine is 3 years old, and I've been the only user
and know all of its ins and outs. It is indeed not an HP, but
an extremely reliable and tractable eMachines T2080. The computer maker,
however, is of the "one year warranty and then pay through the nose"
variety. I lived through the intermittents......and discovered that
tightening five loosely installed motherboard screws really made no
improvement. The worst was a MOLEX 4-pin power connection with an
intermittent. This sort of hanging boot-up appeared suddenly rather
recently and is now a frequent annoyance.......not the kind of thing that
an intermittent is likely to cause. It suggests to me, since
it happens before Windows loads any of the start-up applications, not
even the Task Manager, that it was a free gift along with some
Windows Update. I'm trying to analyze it logically. Keep making
suggestions; you always make sense.

Bill


--
Click to expand...
William B. Lurie

It certainly makes sense to analyze the problem logically :-) However once
you have eliminated the usual suspects in the software domain and have tried
one of your earliest system clones if the problem persists it may well be
hardware related.
Just because a set of electronics has been reliable in the past is no
guarantee that it will continue to be so. Your description of the fault
could well be a motherboard component, such as 2 pence capacitor. The
difficulty here is that the cost of an engineer's time to find the culprit
will probably exceed the cost of a replacement board.
Another approach would be to put up with the occasional stoppages and hang
on till you upgrade your machine to something that would be happier with
Windows Vista when it is released!!!

Another Richard.
 
Richard said:
William B. Lurie

It certainly makes sense to analyze the problem logically :-) However once
you have eliminated the usual suspects in the software domain and have tried
one of your earliest system clones if the problem persists it may well be
hardware related.
Just because a set of electronics has been reliable in the past is no
guarantee that it will continue to be so. Your description of the fault
could well be a motherboard component, such as 2 pence capacitor. The
difficulty here is that the cost of an engineer's time to find the culprit
will probably exceed the cost of a replacement board.
Another approach would be to put up with the occasional stoppages and hang
on till you upgrade your machine to something that would be happier with
Windows Vista when it is released!!!

Another Richard.
Click to expand...
All quite true, Richard. Another way to pin down the source
would be to plug the entire hard drive into another tower to
answer the question of whether the sporadic hang-up is on
the motherboard. I'm in the market for an identical tower
because it's easier than replacing the motherboard. What I've
been hoping to learn in this newsgroup is a way to pin down
whether it is hardware or software, but haven't heard that
yet. I can live with this annoyance, but I don't relish the
thought of adapting all my applications to Vista.
Thanks for valuable thoughts.
Bill
 
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