XP 'Stalls' after booting and logging in - Help!

[Andy]

Hi there everyone.

I'm currently trying to help my friend with her Toshiba laptop. It's a
'Tecra S2' for what it's worth, running XP.

Basically, upon logging in XP loads as normal, brings up the
desktop/task bar etc, and then....

Nothing.

The mouse pointer still moves, but no clicks (left OR right) are
recognised.

No keystrokes seem to be recognised either. Ctrl-Alt-Delete does
nothing.

Now, I've tried booting in safe mode and this produces a somewhat usable
system. I can run msconfig.exe and have attempted rebooting after
disabling all startup items. This seems to have no effect on the
problem though.

This problem affects *both* user accounts, and the machine is
essentially unusable.

Attempting to boot using 'Last Known Good Configuration' has no effect
either.

If it's of any use, the last task completed on this machine was the
importing of a couple of albums worth of music into iTunes, which it did
without any troubles.

Now, I haven't had a great deal to do with Windows previously, so I'm
wondering:

Is there anything in the way of a Disk repair/diagnostic utility as part
of the OS, eg the Windows equivalent of something like 'fsck' in unix?

What other options should I try with msconfig?

FWIW, I'm happy enough running stuff from the command line too.


ANY help is appreciated with this one, I've really got no idea how both
user accounts could be ruined by simply rebooting.

Cheers,
Andy.

 

[Malke]

Hi there everyone.

I'm currently trying to help my friend with her Toshiba laptop. It's a
'Tecra S2' for what it's worth, running XP.

Basically, upon logging in XP loads as normal, brings up the
desktop/task bar etc, and then....

Nothing.

The mouse pointer still moves, but no clicks (left OR right) are
recognised.

No keystrokes seem to be recognised either. Ctrl-Alt-Delete does
nothing.

Now, I've tried booting in safe mode and this produces a somewhat usable
system. I can run msconfig.exe and have attempted rebooting after
disabling all startup items. This seems to have no effect on the
problem though.

This problem affects *both* user accounts, and the machine is
essentially unusable.

Attempting to boot using 'Last Known Good Configuration' has no effect
either.

If it's of any use, the last task completed on this machine was the
importing of a couple of albums worth of music into iTunes, which it did
without any troubles.

Now, I haven't had a great deal to do with Windows previously, so I'm
wondering:

Is there anything in the way of a Disk repair/diagnostic utility as part
of the OS, eg the Windows equivalent of something like 'fsck' in unix?

What other options should I try with msconfig?

FWIW, I'm happy enough running stuff from the command line too.

Windows has Chkdsk instead of fsck, but don't use it yet because if the
hard drive is failing, data can be lost. If your friend has neglected to
back up her data, do it now by booting with Knoppix. I'm sure you know
how to do this, but here are general instructions just in case:

*****
You will need a computer with two cd drives, one of which is a cd/dvd-rw
OR a usb thumb drive with enough capacity to hold your data OR an
external usb/firewire hard drive formatted FAT32 (not NTFS). To get
Knoppix, you need a computer with a fast Internet connection and
third-party burning software. Download the Knoppix .iso and create your
bootable cd. Then boot with it and it will be able to see the Windows
files. If you are using the usb thumb drive or the external hard drive,
right-click on its icon (on the Desktop) to get its properties and
uncheck the box that says "Read Only". Then click on it to open it. Note
that the default mouse action in the window manager used by Knoppix
(KDE) is a single click to open instead of the traditional MS Windows'
double-click. If you want to burn CD/DVDs, use the K3b program.

http://www.knoppix.net
*****

Once the data is safely retrieved, run a hard drive diagnostic with a
diagnostic utility downloaded from the drive mftr.'s website. You will
create a bootable CD with the file you download. You will need
third-party burning software to do this such as Roxio, Nero, or the free
CDBurnerXP Pro.

http://www.cdburnerxp.se/ (or of course you can use whatever burning
program you've got in *nix as long as it can burn .iso's)

Boot with the CD you made and do a thorough test of the drive. If it
fails any physical tests, replace it.

If the hardware tests good, go back into Windows and do two things:

1. Look in Event Viewer for clues. Start>Run>eventvwr.msc [enter]
2. Run a System Restore to when the computer worked.
Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore

If this is more work than you want to do and/or you aren't skilled in
working with Windows, your friend should take the machine to a
professional computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of
BigComputerStore/GeekSquad).

Post back if you need more help.


Malke

 

[John of Aix]

Hi there everyone.

I'm currently trying to help my friend with her Toshiba laptop. It's
a 'Tecra S2' for what it's worth, running XP.

Basically, upon logging in XP loads as normal, brings up the
desktop/task bar etc, and then....

Nothing.

The mouse pointer still moves, but no clicks (left OR right) are
recognised.

No keystrokes seem to be recognised either. Ctrl-Alt-Delete does
nothing.

Now, I've tried booting in safe mode and this produces a somewhat
usable system. I can run msconfig.exe and have attempted rebooting
after disabling all startup items. This seems to have no effect on
the problem though.

The first thing that came into my head on reading your post was an
inversion of the mouse/kb plugs.

Just and idea but simple enought to check.

 

[Onsokumaru]

the problem though.

The first thing that came into my head on reading your post was an
inversion of the mouse/kb plugs.

Just and idea but simple enought to check.

It's a laptop

 

[John of Aix]

the problem though.


It's a laptop

Ah yes, sorry, I didn't notice. In that case it would be very hard
indeed to invert them

 

[Keith]

Hi there everyone.

I'm currently trying to help my friend with her Toshiba laptop. It's a
'Tecra S2' for what it's worth, running XP.

Basically, upon logging in XP loads as normal, brings up the
desktop/task bar etc, and then....

Nothing.

The mouse pointer still moves, but no clicks (left OR right) are
recognised.

No keystrokes seem to be recognised either. Ctrl-Alt-Delete does
nothing.

Now, I've tried booting in safe mode and this produces a somewhat usable
system. I can run msconfig.exe and have attempted rebooting after
disabling all startup items. This seems to have no effect on the
problem though.

First, what kind of Antivirus program are you running (Norton, McAfee,
etc)? A few ideas:

- You might be able to run the standard virus check by doing a boot of
the Antivirus installation CD.
- Boot into safe mode, download and run a RootKit virus detector from
McAfee.
- Boot into safe mode and use Boot Logging. You might see a driver or
something that's causing the problem. From Win XP Help -- "Starts while
logging all the drivers and services that were loaded (or not loaded) by
the system to a file. This file is called ntbtlog.txt and it is located
in the %windir% directory. Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, and
Safe Mode with Command Prompt add to the boot log a list of all the
drivers and services that are loaded. The boot log is useful in
determining the exact cause of system startup problems."

This problem affects *both* user accounts, and the machine is
essentially unusable.

Attempting to boot using 'Last Known Good Configuration' has no effect
either.

A few more ideas:

- Have you installed any software recently? Perhaps your iTunes program
has a bug or virus. You might be able to revert to a recent Checkpoint
using System Restore (?).
- I've seen this kind of problem when incompatible drivers try to share
interrupts.
- I've also had problem with the _order_ that drivers are installed upon
booting... But that kind of problem is a real pain to find.

If it's of any use, the last task completed on this machine was the
importing of a couple of albums worth of music into iTunes, which it did
without any troubles.

Now, I haven't had a great deal to do with Windows previously, so I'm
wondering:

Is there anything in the way of a Disk repair/diagnostic utility as part
of the OS, eg the Windows equivalent of something like 'fsck' in unix?

What other options should I try with msconfig?

FWIW, I'm happy enough running stuff from the command line too.

ANY help is appreciated with this one, I've really got no idea how both
user accounts could be ruined by simply rebooting.

Cheers,
Andy.

Good Luck -- Keith