Severe boot problems

[Bobby]

My PC has developed severe boot problems. I'm not sure if it's linked with
SP2 or not but it's got significantly worse since installing SP2.

My PC freezes at various stages during the boot process. Most commonly when
I try to sign in and various system tray icons are loading. But when I
reboot it can freeze at any point.

The odd thing is that once it boots and settles down (I mean within 10
seconds of booting and settling), the PC will work all day - and reboot OK.
So it can't be a heat problem.

Any ideas?

BTW it will eventually boot and settle. I just have to try about six times
and it works (freezing at various points during the unsuccessful attempts).

Help!

Bobby

 

[Stephen Harris]

My PC has developed severe boot problems. I'm not sure if it's linked with
SP2 or not but it's got significantly worse since installing SP2.

My PC freezes at various stages during the boot process. Most commonly
when I try to sign in and various system tray icons are loading. But when
I reboot it can freeze at any point.

The odd thing is that once it boots and settles down (I mean within 10
seconds of booting and settling), the PC will work all day - and reboot
OK. So it can't be a heat problem.

Any ideas?

BTW it will eventually boot and settle. I just have to try about six times
and it works (freezing at various points during the unsuccessful
attempts).

Help!

Bobby

I have a problem like this but not as drastic. When it gets to the
login screen, I have to wait about 90 seconds, if I enter to soon
nothing works and I have to reboot. Since my other machine
doesn't do this I figure it is because of some .NET evaluation
programming software I installed. Have you tried booting and
giving the computer 3 or 4 minutes to load?

Delayed,
Stephen

 

[Stephen Harris]

My PC has developed severe boot problems. I'm not sure if it's linked with
SP2 or not but it's got significantly worse since installing SP2.

My PC freezes at various stages during the boot process. Most commonly
when I try to sign in and various system tray icons are loading. But when
I reboot it can freeze at any point.

The odd thing is that once it boots and settles down (I mean within 10
seconds of booting and settling), the PC will work all day - and reboot
OK. So it can't be a heat problem.

Any ideas?

BTW it will eventually boot and settle. I just have to try about six times
and it works (freezing at various points during the unsuccessful
attempts).

Help!

Bobby

Also I have only three processes running in systray. I have seen this
complaint before and the solution recommendation is bootvis which
doesn't fix this problem. I haven't seen any post by an MVP who
knows how to fix this problem or who seems to have experienced it.
They think it is normal but long because of too many processes.

 

[Mrs.peel]

-----Original Message-----
My PC has developed severe boot problems. I'm not sure if it's linked with
SP2 or not but it's got significantly worse since installing SP2.

My PC freezes at various stages during the boot process. Most commonly when
I try to sign in and various system tray icons are loading. But when I
reboot it can freeze at any point.

The odd thing is that once it boots and settles down (I mean within 10
seconds of booting and settling), the PC will work all day - and reboot OK.
So it can't be a heat problem.

Any ideas?

BTW it will eventually boot and settle. I just have to try about six times
and it works (freezing at various points during the unsuccessful attempts).

Help!

Bobby


.
Welcome to the group that has found some more ofd MSN's

problems with what was supposed to be a fix. They should
have spent the money on doing it right instead of giving
stockholders a dividend.

 

[Guest]

Resources for troubleshooting startup problems in Windows
XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-
us;308041



How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in
Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-
us;316434

How to troubleshoot by using the System Configuration
utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=310560

 

[Bobby]

Stephen - My PC locks completely i.e. it freezes. I have to reboot.

 

[Malke]

Stephen - My PC locks completely i.e. it freezes. I have to reboot.

I haven't experienced your problem on any of my 4 Windows boxen or any
of the dozen client computer I've upgraded to SP2 or any of the 70
laptops we just set up for our school lab. However, that doesn't
invalidate your experience. I would say - as a guess because I can't
see your computer from here - that in most cases people have something
running in the background that is causing a conflict. It could be buggy
ISP software (SBC-Yahoo dsl comes to mind), a bad driver (did you check
on device mftr.'s websites to see if updated drivers are needed to work
with SP2?), or some third-party software set to start with Windows that
needs to be updated to work with SP2. There just isn't any way to know
for sure without doing a clean boot. So I would start by doing a clean
boot and see how the machine responds. If it responds well, then add
one thing in at a time and observe it for a while after that. Be very
methodical in your testing. Here's a link about doing a clean boot:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=310353 - How to Perform a
Clean Boot in Windows XP

In some cases, it could be malware on the computer that was happily
coexisting with Windows prior to SP2 and the new security restrictions
and changed coding of SP2 is causing the malware to crash. So it is
vital to make sure your computer is 100% spyware and virus-free.

And in some cases, the machine hardware was marginal and it is now
failing and SP2 was coincidental. I see this a lot with older machines.

So, I'm sorry I couldn't address your issues specifically, but you
didn't give me enough to work with. The above troubleshooting steps
should get you started. After you've been through all of them - and
it's always a good practice to make notes when you're troubleshooting
so you can keep track of changes you make - if you are still having
problems then please repost. Be sure to include lots of details about
your computer specs, text of error messages (if any), and what you've
already done and the results.

Good luck,

Malke