WinXP freezes at login screen & Graphic Question

[Knight]

Hi,

I have two questions that I hope someone can help me with:

1. I don't know how it started but every once in a while my PC would
freeze in the blue logon screen just before the password box appear.
Basically it freezes on the writing "Windows is starting". When this
happen, restarting the PC would still freeze me at the same spot. I
have to shut down first then boot it up again.
It doesn't happen everytime, just once in a while though. Anyone have
any suggestion or solution for this problem?

2. My second question is that I recently installed an older game on
WinXP. It installed fine and worked fine for a couple of days. Then,
suddenly it won't work anymore. The usual 'hourglass' appear when I
inserted the disc but the game won't start. It's just a wild guess, but
I think it had something to do with graphics, though I have not changed
or upgraded any settings. Anyone know how to set the graphics to
process older games?

Thank you so much in advance for any advice ro solution given

Knight

 

[Malke]

Hi,

I have two questions that I hope someone can help me with:

1. I don't know how it started but every once in a while my PC would
freeze in the blue logon screen just before the password box appear.
Basically it freezes on the writing "Windows is starting". When this
happen, restarting the PC would still freeze me at the same spot. I
have to shut down first then boot it up again.
It doesn't happen everytime, just once in a while though. Anyone have
any suggestion or solution for this problem?

2. My second question is that I recently installed an older game on
WinXP. It installed fine and worked fine for a couple of days. Then,
suddenly it won't work anymore. The usual 'hourglass' appear when I
inserted the disc but the game won't start. It's just a wild guess,
but I think it had something to do with graphics, though I have not
changed or upgraded any settings. Anyone know how to set the graphics
to process older games?

The answer to #1 is that you probably have hardware failure(s). Random
lockups are most commonly caused by bad hardware. The culprit could be
bad RAM, dying power supply, or other factors. Here are some general
hardware troubleshooting steps:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

If you do have hardware failures, then that could be the cause of why
your game isn't working any more. You should make sure your system's
hardware is healthy first.

Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts
with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are
uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a professional
computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigStoreUSA).

Malke