My PC hangs after the POST

[pleb]

My PC, which was working fine 24 hours ago, took a turn for the worse.

It's an Intel P4 system with two SATA drives and one optical drive and it's
built on a small form factor mobo. The GFX is an ATI AGP X1650 card.

Windows XP was starting to bug me and was begging to be re-installed so I
set about the boring job of re-installing.

It got as far as the first reboot after copying the system files to the hard
disk, when it just started to hang after the POST.

It hangs with a small DOS like flashing underscore in the top left of the
screen.

The only thing that lets the PC continue to boot is to disconnect both hard
drives. I've tried connecting each drive seperatelly but no joy - the only
thing to get past the hang is to have no HDD's connected.

The system does seem to have become more and more buggy/crashy over the lat
few months

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks either way

Simon

 

[pleb]

Sounds like a bad power supply

I was thinking that myself - thought I will unplug the AGP card and see
what happens

Simon

 

[Dave]

My PC, which was working fine 24 hours ago, took a turn for the worse.

It's an Intel P4 system with two SATA drives and one optical drive and
it's
built on a small form factor mobo. The GFX is an ATI AGP X1650 card.

Windows XP was starting to bug me and was begging to be re-installed so I
set about the boring job of re-installing.

It got as far as the first reboot after copying the system files to the
hard
disk, when it just started to hang after the POST.

It hangs with a small DOS like flashing underscore in the top left of the
screen.

The only thing that lets the PC continue to boot is to disconnect both
hard
drives. I've tried connecting each drive seperatelly but no joy - the only
thing to get past the hang is to have no HDD's connected.

The system does seem to have become more and more buggy/crashy over the
lat
few months

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks either way

Simon

Sounds like a bad power supply

 

[pleb]

I was thinking that myself - thought I will unplug the AGP card and see
what happens

Simon

No joy

Have removed my AGP card and it still hangs post POST



Still could be an excuse to buy a new setup

Simon