Windows Home Edition booting issues

Discussion in 'Software' started by ghost gamer, Sep 21, 2004.

  1. ghost gamer

    ghost gamer Private E-2

    Hello everyone, newbie here. Here are the specs to my pc that has been giving me booting issues:

    fx 53-939 pin
    asus a8v/wireless edition-american megatrends bios-latest version
    1 gig mushkin ram pc 3200/low latency/heatspreaders
    liteon cd-rw
    liteon dvd
    western digital 120 gig SATA/7200 rpm/8 mb cache
    ati x 800 xt p.e.-cat 4.8
    sound blaster audigy 2 zs
    enermax 600 watt noisetaker
    creative labs megaworks speakers
    windows home edition (service pack 1)
    dx 9.0b


    My problem is that the pc tends to not reliably boot up. Sometimes it will get to the windows home edition loading screen and then just hang there. Or it will make it to the blue welcome screen and then hang there. Also, sometimes it will make it to the desktop, but the bottom tool bar is gone.

    Nothing is overclocked and temps are fine. It does this randomly. Lately, it has been booting fine. I have not yet reformatted/reinstalled windows. I ran memtest through three passes with no errors. I also ran Western Digital diagonistics (quick test and extended test) on the hard drive with no errors.

    I ran norton anti virus, none detected.

    Could it be a driver issue for the SATA drive? I am not familiar with this type of drive. I checked the driver date on the SATA drive and its like 7/7/2001.

    Any ideas? I appreciate any help, cause this is driving me buggy.Thanks!
     
  2. mcadam

    mcadam Major Amnesia

    hmmmm it occassionally hangs there..... tricky. perhaps your windows folder has become corrupt and needs to be repaired in the windows setup options? is everything set to correct in BIOS and have you got all the latest drivers for your hardware? (can get them free at www.driverguide.com )
     
  3. Wavetar

    Wavetar Sergeant

    Maybe it's not random? I had a computer a few months ago that worked great with 98SE. It was upgraded to XP Pro & began doing what you described. I formatted & loaded XP Pro from scratch...better, but it still hangs if I use the 'restart' option upon shut down, or if I let a program which has finished installing on the computer try to restart. If the computer is shut down completely, then manually restarted, never a problem. Maybe it's the same with yours?

    I didn't get it figured out, since the guy who owns it could live with the way it was working.
     
  4. ghost gamer

    ghost gamer Private E-2

    thanks for replying. I have noticed that sometimes when I run chkdsk, it will produce errors. I have not to this point wrote them down, but I will. I then run chkdsk /f and it seems to fix the errors on the hard drive.Yeah, all the drivers are current (except as mentioned below) as of when the pc was built (August 2004).I have not looked over the BIOS settings in detail. My knowledge of the BIOS is not great, but I do understand some. What settings in the BIOS could be causing this issue? Memory timing? I think, could be wrong, but I think the memory settings are all on auto.


    I do have updated drivers for the hard drive. But I am not sure if I need the raid drivers or the SATA drivers.I know my hard drive is SATA drive, but I do not know if its in a RAID configuration. How can I determine this? I am really unsure about installing new drivers for this hard drive, one because I am not sure if I need the SATA driver or the RAID driver and two, I don't want to install the wrong thing and then have the pc not even want to boot at all.

    I guess the first step is to get organized about this. Next time it happens I will note every entry in event viewer as well as noting errors produced by chkdsk.

    If this was your pc, how would you proceed in diagnosing this?

    Thanks
     
  5. Just Playin

    Just Playin MajorGeek

    It could be a software conflict. I had to replace ZoneAlarm with Sygate firewall because ZA would cause random system lock-ups during start-up after I installed SP2. You could try disabling start-up programs until you locate the problem app.
     
  6. ghost gamer

    ghost gamer Private E-2

    I'll take a look at what apps load at startup.Its not that many. Correct me if I am wrong, but if the windows install was corrupt won't I have other windows related issues other than at boot? I would also think that if the windows install was corrupt, won't the boot issue of hanging be almost on every boot attempt?
     

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