Often, now, my XP won't boot up all of the way.
"Often"? Just sometimes, not always? How often is "often"?
Looks completly normal with
desktop and tray icons, but it will not do anything, open anything, or work
anything. Most of the time I start with F8 and choose start with last known
good configuration. System restore does not work.
Have run virus scan,
Using *what* anti-virus program? They are far from being equally good.
Do you run anti-spyware programs? Which ones?
I can't be sure, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if your
problem is caused by malware infection.
chkdsk, and defragged yielding no help.
Both of those are completely irrelevant to the kind of problem you
describe, and could help with it.
How about re-installing WIN XP OP
system with the disk? Will that help?
If you do a clean reinstallation of Windows, it eliminates *all*
problems unless the problems are caused by hardware failure. Hardware
problems can often be responsible for inability to boot correctly.
Moreover, in my view reinstalling Windows to try to fix a problem is
almost always a very poor choice. Reinstalling should be thought of as
a last resort, to be done only when all else fails. With a modicum of
care, it should never be necessary to reinstall Windows (XP or any
other version). I've run Windows 3.0, 3.1, WFWG 3.11, Windows 95,
Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and now Windows
7, each for the period of time before the next version came out, and
each on two or more machines here. I never reinstalled any of them,
and I have never had anything more than an occasional minor problem.
It's my belief that this mistaken notion stems from the technical
support people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost
any problem they don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and
reinstall." That's the perfect solution for them. It gets you off the
phone quickly, it almost always works, and it doesn't require them to
do any real troubleshooting (a skill that most of them obviously don't
possess in any great degree).
But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your
programs, you have to reinstall all the Windows and application
updates, you have to locate and install all the needed drivers for
your system, you have to recustomize Windows and all your apps to work
the way you're comfortable with.
Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs?
Can you find all the needed installation codes? Do you have data
backups to restore? Do you even remember all the customizations and
tweaks you may have installed to make everything work the way you
like? Occasionally there are problems that are so difficult to solve
that Windows should be reinstalled cleanly. But they are few and far
between; reinstallation should not be a substitute for
troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only after all
other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have failed.
And perhaps most important: if you reformat and reinstall without
finding out what caused your problem, you will very likely repeat the
behavior that caused it, and quickly find yourself back in exactly the
same situation.
If you have problems, post the details of them here; it's likely that
someone can help you and a reinstallation won't be required.
