XP hangs on startup

[Charles]

I have XP Home installed.

I have had the machine for nearly 5 years. I have made no hardware changes
in the last year or more, and have not (knowingly) added any software in the
last 6 months or so. I apply Windows updates, and protect the PC as far as
I can with Norton.

Suddenly, it stalls on startup. I get the "Windows XP" logo, but the little
blue blips that pass across the screen suddenly stop. That's it! No more!

I can start the PC in safe mode, and I've defragged the hard drive (it was
80% full, but I've deleted enough stuff that it's now <60% full - and
defragged again). No difference. Still stalls on "normal" startup.

I've looked at device manager and all the devices seem to be working
normally.

This happened once before, about 2 years ago, and I got out of it by
re-installing XP. I really don't want to go through that rigmarole again.

Any ideas?

 

[Charles]

Forgot to add - I've used System Restore to go back up to 3 months. Still
no success

 

[lvee]

usually, not always, if you can boot to safe mode, that tells you it's a
device driver causing a conflict because only minimal drivers are used when
booting to safe mode. So, to use the 'ol process of elimination, start by
removing your external devices one at a time..if it works okay after
removing one of them, then check for a driver update for that device.
Next thing is to remove one stick of ram at a time, booting after each
removal to see if it's a ram problem.
One way to help identify what's going on is, while in safe mode, check the
Event Viewer in Administrative Tools found in the control panel applet.