New PC - Windows won't run in Normal

  • Thread starter Thread starter Craig Williams
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Craig Williams

I just assembled a new PC. It will start and run in Safe Mode, but not in
Normal. It gets to the Windows XP splash page, blinks once, then stops. I
suspect something with the video card, but I don't know what to try to fix
it. Things work well in Safe Mode, but obviously I need to get beyond that.

System:
Athlon XP 2500+
DFI NFII Ultra Infinity motherboard (nVidia nForce2 chipset)
MSI Geforce4 MX440 128MB graphics card
640MB generic RAM
120GB Maxtor Ultra HD
Generic monitor, floppy, and CD-ROM
Aspire X-Dreamer II case

Merry Christmas to all, and thanks in advance for any help!

Craig
[to reply directly, change the VERB to a NUMERAL]
 
A couple of other pieces of info:

The OS is Windows XP Pro Full. The RAM is PC2100.
 
A couple of other pieces of info:

The OS is Windows XP Pro Full. The RAM is PC2100.
Click to expand...

Try taking out the unnecessary parts and see if it will boot. All you
really need is the CPU/FAN/HS, memory, video card, & one harddrive.
Then add parts back to see if you can narrow down the problem. I'd
guess the network card, but that's just a wild guess.
 
I just assembled a new PC. It will start and run in Safe Mode, but not in
Normal. It gets to the Windows XP splash page, blinks once, then stops. I
suspect something with the video card, but I don't know what to try to fix
it. Things work well in Safe Mode, but obviously I need to get beyond that.

System:
Athlon XP 2500+
DFI NFII Ultra Infinity motherboard (nVidia nForce2 chipset)
MSI Geforce4 MX440 128MB graphics card
Click to expand...
If you got a driver cd with the mother board load the nForce2 drives and
the driver for MX440 video card.

Can you use event viewer to view the system log and see what errors are
occurring.
 
<<It will start and run in Safe Mode, but not in
Normal. >>>

this is 9 times out of 10 a driver issue. in safe mode do you have any problems in the device manager? Any duplicates hardware or
instances of hardware no longer on the system?
 
Thanks for your responses. I fiddled around for a while, and finally
reloaded Windows. It seems to be working fine now. There must have been a
corrupted file(s) in my original installation - it seemed sort of unstable
at first, random reboot, kept saying it couldn't copy a file during install,
etc. So I loaded Windows with the option of copying the installation files
to the HD and everyting worked fine.

The only glitch now is that in the System properties, my XP 2500+ is showing
as 1.1 GHz. It showed as 1.8 GHz at first.

Craig
 
I just assembled a new PC. It will start and run in Safe Mode, but
not in Normal. It gets to the Windows XP splash page, blinks once,
then stops. I suspect something with the video card, but I don't know
what to try to fix it. Things work well in Safe Mode, but obviously I
need to get beyond that.

System:
Athlon XP 2500+
DFI NFII Ultra Infinity motherboard (nVidia nForce2 chipset)
MSI Geforce4 MX440 128MB graphics card
640MB generic RAM
120GB Maxtor Ultra HD
Generic monitor, floppy, and CD-ROM
Aspire X-Dreamer II case

Merry Christmas to all, and thanks in advance for any help!

Craig
[to reply directly, change the VERB to a NUMERAL]
Click to expand...

I had a problem similar to this however I was running a Win98SE machine. It
ran through the entire boot sequence, got to the 98 splash screen, then
goes to a black screen and then hangs. I could get it in safe mode but was
lost at what to do. DAMN THAT PISSED ME OFF. I went through the startup log
files and it appeared that when Windows tried to load some TTF fonts and
there was some kind of corruption or error. My cousin, who was there to
"assist" in fixing this problem with me re-installed win98 over itself to
fill in any file gaps or corruptions their might have been. After this, I
couldn't even get the machine to start in safe-mode. After trying some more
ideas of his with my computer , he departed and left me with my box in an
even worse state than what it was before and we threw around the idea of
building a new machine the next day. He told me it was most likely a
hardware problem (bad memory, flakey mobo, bad cpu) I was hesitant to
believe this, thinking back of how to most people these days would rather
just replace something then actually fix it. So one morning I read through
my mobo manual and discovered that if the computer froze after a certain
part of the boot up sequence to clear the CMOS via a jumper. After I did
this I set my BIOS settings to Optimized and then got it to work in safe
mode. I reinstalled a bunch of drivers and was pleasantly suprised after a
reboot to see that Windows chugged along and loaded normally. Bah humbug to
my cousin.

OT: I have a Soyo KV7 Dragon Plus mobo, which has always been flakey with
BIOS settings (usually changing a few things here and there and windows
crashes or spontaneously reboots) and I have always had to run my CPU
underclocked and my FSB at 100MHz. I have an Athlon XP 1700+ that should be
running at 1400 MHz but it only runs stable at 1100 MHz :( My cousin
believes I might have a bad CPU because it's an OEM chip and it can never
run at it's clocked speed but I am unsure of this because of my mobo's PMS
issues.

Just my 2 cents.

-DosE
 
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