During Windows XP Startup - Black Screen following Windows screen

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I have been having some issues with Windows XP lately (SP2 with all
updates installed). At shutdown, when it gets to the "Windows is
shutting down" screen, it often just sits there without completely
turning off. I can tolerate that, and would just power down manually.

But yesterday, at startup, the machine froze after the Windows screen -
just a black screen forever. I hit reset, and it asked me if I wanted
to try the last known good configuration, and that does the exact same
thing.

I have a second boot drive, so I went in and ran a chkdsk /f on the
problem drive, and also did a full virus scan, and neither revealed any
issues.

What would you suggest as the proper course of troubleshooting from
here?

Thank you very much, in advance!

 

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Following up... I solved my own problem.

The last time I had a major system error (it was a blue screen hive
error) the problem was solved by copying a registry snapshot from the
System_Volume_Information folder. I didn't think my problem was of the
same variety as that time, since it was not a blue screen, but I
decided, "what the heck" and tried the same tactic. And voila. It
worked. I am starting to think that the snapshot folders are the magic
bullet.

Just for the record, I've seen a lot of the black screen posts saying
that people's monitors went into standby mode - i.e. some type of video
problem - that was not the case with my problem. The monitor stayed
on.

Just posting this solution for posterity.