Won't Open programs half the time when I start it up.

Some background: I made this PC myself. Running Win XP Pro 64.

From the very start, whenever I would turn it on and try to open programs it would not open them. It would get a hourglass symbol -only- on the bottom taskbar. The hourglass would go away once I moved it out on to the desktop. Also, if I attempted to restart, it would leave the desktop and then get stuck on the "Closing Windows" screen or w/e it says there.

Now, I could click on things, move the mouse around, open the start menu. I just can't open programs. Not even the calculator will open.

This happens on about half of the start-ups. I simply have to hit the reset button and try again.

Was wondering if this was something anyone had heard of.

Thanks,


Jon

 

I would suggest a bit of file corruption - I would do the following checks to see if that is a root of the problem
Have your XP disc reafy, and click start, run, and type in sfc /scannow, and a small window will come up, with a progress bar-put your cd in your rom drive, and you will probab ly have to click retry several times, as windows replaces any corrupted files.
The other check, is to run a CHKDSK /R , either from the start , run, or, by right cking my computer, click manage, click on disc management , and then right click your partition, click properties, then tick both the repair options, shut , down, restart.

 

I did the first thing. I couldn't find the "tick repair options" you were talking about.

That very well could have worked, but when I was restarting it, I got curious and on impulse I pressed TAB to switch to post.

Now it acts as if it's in Safe Mode. How do I get back out of it?

 

Sorry, I didn't explore all of my options. It acted like it was using On-board graphics, because it had a very low res, and lagged when I was just scrolling down a webpage, hence why I immediately jumped to Safe Mode. So I went and got my drivers disk and installed them. Viola! All is well.

I think whatever you had me do just wiped my drivers.

No worries though because I think it fixed my problem. I've restarted about 5 times now and it's worked every time. Thanks!

On a related note, what exactly does POSTing do? I didn't really know what it did, but had heard of it, and when it said TAB to switch to POST my curious side took over and I just pushed it.

 

Post is an abbreviation for -Power-On Self Test
This is the pc/laptop self checking part that it goes through before starting Windows.

Glad to see sfc /scannow , or, CHKDSK /R DID THE JOB.
The other one , was my fault, I left a tab off - when in properties, in disc management, I forgot to tell you to click on the tools tab- no need to now - one to remember .

 

It's been a few days and still everything is working.

Thanks