How can I keep blue screen message on long enough to read text before screen goes black?

[KWW]

I found the knowledge base articles about black screen on startup....
wondering though how I could keep Win XP Pro from flashing past the blue
screen with its Fatal Exception error info before it shuts down to the
black screen?? It flashes up, I can read the word "Exception" and only get
a glimpse at the other text and then the drive spins down and the video goes
black/gray.

Is there a location on the disk (I could copy onto a floppy or something)
when I get into the file system via the Recovery Console?
TIA

 

[Jim B]

Go to advanced tab in system properties. Click Settings button in the
Startup and recover section. Under System failure Uncheck - Automatically
restart. Click OK

 

[Guest]

I know it can be pretty annoying, all i can suggest is take a photo

Good luck with that

Try searching Google

Cheers

Quintin

 

[KWW]

That would help except that the system will not fully boot up. Before the
login screen it goes to black and the drive spins down.
KWW

 

[Malke]

That would help except that the system will not fully boot up. Before
the login screen it goes to black and the drive spins down.
KWW

If your system is turning off or the hard drive is stopping before you
can boot Windows, you most probably have hardware failure. Here are
some general hardware troubleshooting steps. I would start by testing
the power supply and the hard drive.

1) Open the computer and run it open, cleaning out all dust bunnies and
observing all fans (overheating will cause system freezing). Obviously
you can't do this with a laptop, but you can hear if the fan is running
and feel if the laptop is getting too hot.

2) Test the RAM - I like Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org. Obviously, you
have to get the program from a working machine. You will either
download the precompiled Windows binary to make a bootable floppy or
the .iso to make a bootable cd. If you want to use the latter, you'll
need to have third-party burning software on the machine where you
download the file - XP's built-in burning capability won't do the job.
In either case, boot with the media you made. The test will run
immediately. Let the test run for an extended period of time - unless
errors are seen immediately. If you get any errors, replace the RAM.

3) Test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from the mftr. Usually
you will download the file and make a bootable floppy with it. Boot
with the media and do a thorough test. If the drive has physical
errors, replace it.

4) The power supply may be going bad or be inadequate for the devices
you have in the system. The adequacy issue doesn't really apply to a
laptop, although of course the power
supply can be faulty.

5) Test the motherboard with something like TuffTest from
www.tufftest.com. Sometimes this is useful, and sometimes it isn't.

Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts
with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are
uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a good local
computer repair shop (not a CompUSA or Best Buy type of store).

Malke

 

[KWW]

I appreciate the advice. Actually I am running the computer with an old W2k
MASTER and my XP disk as the slave. (I jumpered from Master to Slave.) I
can read the disk just fine.... I can run it all day... but I have some
locked data on there that I really want to get out (#@$%&*, I NEVER used to
put stuff in "My Documents" but I finally thought, "hey, this is not that
bad an idea after all, even if MS did introduce it to Windows and push it as
the default...." So now I can get to 80% of the "my document" data by using
W2k Admin to (eventually) get past the lockouts, but for some reason I can't
get premission to some of the rest...)

Anyway, the PS, cooling, etc is fine. I believe it is because I finally
just Held the Power button in to override the endless loop of "Wait" / "End
Now" messages for Windows Explorer on reboot after the Security updates
(both options just kept coming back over and over and over and over again).
There must have been some parameter or something that didn't get set right.

Thank you, though! I have lived through P/S problems that are really subtle
to find and you start to think that you are going nuts... nothing (else)
checks out bad....
KWW