T
Terry Liittschwager
Many weeks ago now I had my wife's WinXP Home system set to
automatically do the Windows Update. One afternoon I came back into
our office area to find the screen showing the Windows logo and the
progress bar frozen.
I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that what had happened was that an update
requiring a system restart had been done and that the update had
caused a problem.
Anyway, the system was completely unresponsive, and I turned it off by
holding down the power button for 4 seconds and then powering it back
up.
It came up with the screen giving me a number of options. I tried
them all successively in the following order:
normal restart
last known good
then started working back in time with the system restore points
All resulted in the same original halt until I got back about three
days, at which time it successfully booted.
Ever since that time, it does the same thing any time the system has
to be booted.
I've done the following:
Turned off Windows Update.
Regular full virus scans with virus files updated regularly.
Malware scans using CWShredder, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Bazooka,
SpywareBlaster, SpyAD and HijackThis.
Updated all drivers to the most current.
However, the behavior persists. Any boot gets to the logo screen and
the progress bar and then freezes. Backing up through the system
restore points always works somewhere between 2 and 6 system restore
points back regardless of whether we let a few days go by between
power down/reboot cycles or a few weeks.
Also, at any point, it will boot in safe mode, even in safe mode with
networking.
We've taken to just leaving the system on all the time. Now, however,
I need to install some new software on her machine, and that's going
to require a reboot. And, of course, having to go back up 2 to 6
restore points will undo the new software installation, so I'm going
to have to figure out what is wrong.
My first question is, is there a log written somewhere that will show
what XP was trying to do when it halted? Or, is there an option to
have it display what it's doing rather than showing that progress bar?
This was a Win98se installation that I upgraded with WinXP, but prior
to SP2 from Microsoft itself, so I have that CD. I'm thinking my next
step will be to do a repair installation, but I'm a little nervous
about that, and it will, I think, mean that I'll have to go through
that long download (we have dial-up only) for SP2 again.
So, any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Terry Liittschwager
automatically do the Windows Update. One afternoon I came back into
our office area to find the screen showing the Windows logo and the
progress bar frozen.
I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that what had happened was that an update
requiring a system restart had been done and that the update had
caused a problem.
Anyway, the system was completely unresponsive, and I turned it off by
holding down the power button for 4 seconds and then powering it back
up.
It came up with the screen giving me a number of options. I tried
them all successively in the following order:
normal restart
last known good
then started working back in time with the system restore points
All resulted in the same original halt until I got back about three
days, at which time it successfully booted.
Ever since that time, it does the same thing any time the system has
to be booted.
I've done the following:
Turned off Windows Update.
Regular full virus scans with virus files updated regularly.
Malware scans using CWShredder, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Bazooka,
SpywareBlaster, SpyAD and HijackThis.
Updated all drivers to the most current.
However, the behavior persists. Any boot gets to the logo screen and
the progress bar and then freezes. Backing up through the system
restore points always works somewhere between 2 and 6 system restore
points back regardless of whether we let a few days go by between
power down/reboot cycles or a few weeks.
Also, at any point, it will boot in safe mode, even in safe mode with
networking.
We've taken to just leaving the system on all the time. Now, however,
I need to install some new software on her machine, and that's going
to require a reboot. And, of course, having to go back up 2 to 6
restore points will undo the new software installation, so I'm going
to have to figure out what is wrong.
My first question is, is there a log written somewhere that will show
what XP was trying to do when it halted? Or, is there an option to
have it display what it's doing rather than showing that progress bar?
This was a Win98se installation that I upgraded with WinXP, but prior
to SP2 from Microsoft itself, so I have that CD. I'm thinking my next
step will be to do a repair installation, but I'm a little nervous
about that, and it will, I think, mean that I'll have to go through
that long download (we have dial-up only) for SP2 again.
So, any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Terry Liittschwager