Thanks Leonard,
I'm clueless myself, since I haven't done any changes. I turned it on
this morning, and it worked fine as usual. Then after turning it off for
a while, it wouldn't start. There were no hardware or software changes
in between.
I noticed there was a Windows update waiting to be installed last time I
turned it off. So I turned it on in safe mode and uninstalled the latest
update (KB969947), but it didn't help.
Diagnosing Windows XP startup problems isn't all about guesswork, is it?
There must be some way of having the system tell you what's wrong.
Gustaf
If suggestions include words like try, maybe, might be, could be,
etc., that might be construed as guesswork.
Provide more information about your system, run some scans for
malicious software and post relevant events around the time of the
issue:
Click Start, Run and in the box enter:
msinfo32
Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select
All, Copy and then paste
the information back here.
There will be some personal information (like System Name and User
Name), and whatever appears to
be private information to you, just delete from the pasted
information.
This will minimize back and forth Q&A and eliminate guesswork and
assumptions.
Perform some scans for malicious software first, then fix any
remaining issues:
Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware
detection programs:
Malwarebytes (MBAM):
http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS):
http://www.superantispyware.com/
They can be uninstalled later if desired.
To see the Event Viewer logs, click Start, Settings, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, Event Viewer.
A shortcut to Event Viewer is to click Start, Run and in the box
enter:
%SystemRoot%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s
Click OK to launch the Event Viewer.
If you do find interesting events in the Event Viewer that are at the
date/time of your issue, here is an efficient method to post the
information.
The most interesting logs are usually the Application and System.
Some logs may be almost or completely empty.
Not every event it a problem, some are informational messages that
things are working okay and some are warnings.
Each event is sorted by Date and Time. Errors will have red Xs,
Warnings will have yellow !s.
Information messages have white is. Not every Error or Warning event
means there is a serious issue.
Some are excusable at startup time when Windows is booting. Try to
find just the events at the date
and time around your problem. No event should defy explanation.
If you double click an event, it will open a Properties windows with
more information. On the right are
black up and down arrow buttons to scroll through the open events. The
third button that looks like
two pages on top of each other is used to copy the event details to
your Windows clipboard.
When you find an interesting event that occurred around the time of
your issue, click the third button
under the up and down arrows to copy the details and then you can
paste the details (right click, Paste
or CTRL-V) the detail text back here for analysis.
To get a fresh start on any Event Viewer log, you can choose to clear
the log (backing up the log is offered),
then reproduce your issue, then look at just the events around the
time of your issue.
