Restarting problem

[Alan Thompson]

When I turn my computer on in the morning it always restarts itself several
time,sometimes at the 'Welcome' screen and sometimes I have to "Start
Windows normally' from the Start Choices menu several times before it
finally completes the Startup.
However,having got it to boot-Desktop icons displayed correctly- and I
switch off,wait a few minutes and then restart all goes exactly as it should
and the computer reboots properly.
Anyone any ideas on the problem? Help much appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Hi Alan,
Has this only been happening recently? Do you know if you changed anything
which caused this?
It's hard to tell from this breif description, but there's a few things I'd
check out first:
-Make sure you have the most up to date drivers for all your hardware. For
a starter, check Microsoft update on update.microsoft.com to see if any
hardware updates are available. If not, look on the venders sites yourself.
-When your logged in, click Start>Run type "msconfig" without the speech
marks and press OK. Click the 'Services' Tab and click 'Hide all microsoft
services'. Disable all those services.
Now restart to see if the issue still occurs - this sees if any third party
application are causing the problem.
Once you've checked this out - remember to enable the services you want to
start up

Apart from that, maybe a error-check of your C: drive.

HTH!
Rob

 

[Guest]

I can tell you that I ran into a similar problem when I "foolishly" assumed
that I could "upgrade" Win XP Home to Win XP Pro... though the XP Pro
box/instructions did subtly (by omission) imply otherwise.

My solution to the resulting mess was to just format the drive and install
XP Pro from scratch... feeding it the XP Home OEM CD at the authentication
stage, since all I had was the XP Pro Upgrade version.

Good Luck

Harry

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Alan

Please check Event Viewer for Warning / Error Reports in the System and
Application logs for the last boot and post copies.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Administrative Tools, and
Event Viewer. When researching the meaning of the error, information
regarding Event ID, Source and Description are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308427&sd=tech

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you should
double click for further information. You can copy using copy and paste.
Often the link will, however, say there is no further information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double click
on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a button
resembling two pages. Double click the button and close Event Viewer. Now
start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of the message. This
will paste the info from the Event Viewer Error Report complete with links
into the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from Event
Viewer.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I can tell you that I ran into a similar problem when I "foolishly"
assumed that I could "upgrade" Win XP Home to Win XP Pro... though
the XP Pro box/instructions did subtly (by omission) imply otherwise.

Not only is an upgrade from XP Home to XP Professional possible, but it's
the easiest and most likely successful of all possible upgrades.

My solution to the resulting mess was to just format the drive and
install XP Pro from scratch... feeding it the XP Home OEM CD at the
authentication stage, since all I had was the XP Pro Upgrade version.

The above is not say to that it, or any upgrade, *always* well. It usually
does, but sometimes not.

 

[Guest]

Ken

Perhaps... "now", but all I know is that when I did try it about 1.5 years
ago I got into a similar "chronic re-boot" situation and the MS telephone
support person said that this upgrade path had a success rate of less than
20%, in their opinion (i.e., a failure rate of +80%)... and was therefore not
recommended by MS.

Harry

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ken

Perhaps... "now", but all I know is that when I did try it about 1.5
years ago I got into a similar "chronic re-boot" situation and the MS
telephone support person said that this upgrade path had a success
rate of less than 20%, in their opinion (i.e., a failure rate of
+80%)... and was therefore not recommended by MS.

Nope, it's always been so. It would appear that you got a poorly-informed
telephone support person.

What your problem was, I don't know, but it wasn't that this upgrade was not
supported or not recommended.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

 

[Guest]

Ken

OK, but, while I don't mean to takeover this person's thread here, I'll just
quote from the side of the box that the XP Pro Upgrade came in... which is
also the wording that my MS support contact referred me to:

"ATTENTION!
The enclosed program will search your hard disk and/or CD to confirm your
eligibility for this upgrade. The software will install ONLY if you are a
licensed user of one of the following products:
Microsoft Windows 98
Windows 98 Second Edition Windows
Millennium Edition
Windows NT Workstation 4.0
Windows 2000 Professional"

Finally -- and I'm not trying to be a jerk here... just attempting to
illustrate to you guys howmuch fun it is to live in the "real world" -- I
should also mention that, in order to get the XP Pro Upgrade to -- ultimately
-- work (as it would not accept the XP Home CD, which was, in turn, an
"upgrade"... from Win ME), I had to dredge up an old Win 95 OEM CD that I
luckly had lying around. THIS issue had ZIP to do with MS and EVERYTHING to
do with HP... which, essentially, provided only a "recovery" set of CD's to
restore the original config, but no OS CD.

Whatever, you've got the last word here... I'm all done venting.

Harry

ps: to make matters worse the PC involved above was my wife's PC... you can
guess howmuch I impressed her with my computer expertise during that adventure

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ken

OK, but, while I don't mean to takeover this person's thread here,
I'll just quote from the side of the box that the XP Pro Upgrade came
in... which is also the wording that my MS support contact referred
me to:

"ATTENTION!
The enclosed program will search your hard disk and/or CD to confirm
your eligibility for this upgrade. The software will install ONLY if
you are a licensed user of one of the following products:
Microsoft Windows 98
Windows 98 Second Edition Windows
Millennium Edition
Windows NT Workstation 4.0
Windows 2000 Professional"

Yes, I'm aware that the box doesn't say that an upgrade from Home to
Professional is possible. It's a serious omission. Presumably it never
occurred to Microsoft that anyonewould want to do this. Nevertheless it does
work.

Finally -- and I'm not trying to be a jerk here... just attempting to
illustrate to you guys howmuch fun it is to live in the "real world"
-- I should also mention that, in order to get the XP Pro Upgrade to
-- ultimately -- work (as it would not accept the XP Home CD, which
was, in turn, an "upgrade"... from Win ME), I had to dredge up an old
Win 95 OEM CD that I luckly had lying around.

Something is very much wrong with your description of what happened. You
said you were doing an upgrade, but apparently you were trying to do a clean
installation with an Upgrade version. When you do an upgrade from one
operating system to another, you don't need to to show it the XP Home CD.
You need to do that *only* if you were doing a clean installation with an
Upgrade version.

THIS issue had ZIP to
do with MS and EVERYTHING to do with HP... which, essentially,
provided only a "recovery" set of CD's to restore the original
config, but no OS CD.

Doing a clean installation with an Upgrade version, when you have only an
OEM restore CD and not an installtion CD (apparently this was your
situation) is also possible. It's more complicated, but it *can* be done.
First restore from the Restore CD. Then run the XP upgrade CD from within
that restored system, and change from Upgrade to New Install. When it asks
where, press Esc to delete the partition and start over.

 

[Guest]

Ken

re: your comment -- "Something is very much wrong with your description of
what happened. You said you were doing an upgrade, but apparently you were
trying to do a clean installation with an Upgrade version. When you do an
upgrade from one
operating system to another, you don't need to to show it the XP Home CD.
You need to do that *only* if you were doing a clean installation with an
Upgrade version."

OK, I may have mangled a few details due to the lapse of time, but my point
was that the Home-to-Pro "upgrade" path (apparently) produced an impossible
situation (chronic rebooting), so the only alternative at that point was to
resort to the pure install using the upgrade product.

Whatever, maybe I did do something stupid during all of the upgrade
maneuvers, but I can say that I have had ZERO issues with Win XP Pro...
compared with Home and certainly with ME (what a joke that was).

Harry

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ken

re: your comment -- "Something is very much wrong with your
description of what happened. You said you were doing an upgrade, but
apparently you were trying to do a clean installation with an Upgrade
version. When you do an upgrade from one
operating system to another, you don't need to to show it the XP Home
CD. You need to do that *only* if you were doing a clean installation
with an Upgrade version."

OK, I may have mangled a few details due to the lapse of time, but my
point was that the Home-to-Pro "upgrade" path (apparently) produced
an impossible situation (chronic rebooting), so the only alternative
at that point was to resort to the pure install using the upgrade
product.

It still isn't clear to me whether you were attempting a clean installation
or an upgrade, but if it was an upgrade, I can only repeat what I've said
earlier:

If you say you had problems doing the upgrade, I have to believe you. My
point is not that it never causes problems, but that it's *highly* unlikely
to cause problems.

Whatever, maybe I did do something stupid during all of the upgrade
maneuvers, but I can say that I have had ZERO issues with Win XP
Pro... compared with Home

I'm glad to hear you've had no problems, but if you're saying that Home has
more problems than Professional, that's not correct. The only difference
between the two is that Professional has a few features (mostly related to
networking and security) missing from Home. Regarding stability and absence
of problems, they are identical.

If you had problems with Home, and also had problems with an upgrade from
that problem-ridden Home installation, it's highly likely that both were
casued by the same thing--an installation of Home that was badly screwed up.
I can't diagnose what kind of screwup there might have been from this
distance, but certainly a strong possibility is malware infestation.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

 

[Rock]

Ken

Whatever, maybe I did do something stupid during all of the upgrade
maneuvers, but I can say that I have had ZERO issues with Win XP Pro...
compared with Home and certainly with ME (what a joke that was).

Harry

There is no functional difference between Home and Pro that would cause
problems in one but not the other. Must have been a problem with that
particular Home installation - such as malware - which also created
problems for the Home > Pro Upgrade.

 

[Guest]

Ken et all

Thanks for all of your feedback here. As I reflect back on the last four
years of events, you are probably correct in suggesting that the original
update from ME to Home was likely somehow flawed, and hence produced my
"artificial" perception that Home was having problems.

The initial concern was that ME was ostensibly dying a slow death --
EVERYTHING was taking longer and longer and longer to do, an increasing
number of lockups, and never-ending defrags, troubleshooting, etc. The
decision to go with Pro happened when we finally got cable-modem access in
our neighborhood and was based advice from friends etc (not on any Home
related reason), since I already had Pro on my PC, and we wanted share the
broadband connection, I decided to "just" upgrade my wife's PC from Home to
Pro... and that's where the reboot loop stuff happened... which was my only
real beef of any significance with Home -- it was just that my assumption was
Home to Pro ("on paper") should have been a "slam dunk"... so I did not do
much in the way of backing up my wife's data prior to the reboot
experience... which may have biased me even more against Home.

The bottom line here is that my criticism of Home and the Home to Pro
upgrade was apparently misplaced.

Harry

--
"A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money"

Ken

re: your comment -- "Something is very much wrong with your description of
what happened. You said you were doing an upgrade, but apparently you were
trying to do a clean installation with an Upgrade version. When you do an
upgrade from one
operating system to another, you don't need to to show it the XP Home CD.
You need to do that *only* if you were doing a clean installation with an
Upgrade version."

OK, I may have mangled a few details due to the lapse of time, but my point
was that the Home-to-Pro "upgrade" path (apparently) produced an impossible
situation (chronic rebooting), so the only alternative at that point was to
resort to the pure install using the upgrade product.

Whatever, maybe I did do something stupid during all of the upgrade
maneuvers, but I can say that I have had ZERO issues with Win XP Pro...
compared with Home and certainly with ME (what a joke that was).

Harry