Boot problem

Hi,
I am not sure if this is the right place for this question, if not I apologize. A friend of mine has a windows xp computer with a 1.2 GHz intel celeron processor that very infrequently won't boot. When you turn it on it takes you to the wallpaper and nothing else. No icons on the desktop, no start button or anything then it just stops. He used the power button to force a shut down and that takes a long time to shut down too. I ran check disc and that came up good, he uses antivirus and anti-spyware software and the scans always come up clean.

When he got the computer I had to do some serious cleaning, the previous owner was told that the pc was no good. The fans were all clogged, so I blew them out. Everything else seemed to be ok so we tried to boot it and nothing but a blue screen came up. So I formatted the hard drive and used the recovery disc's to reinstall everything. Then it worked fine. This was probably a year and a half ago. It has done this mysterious non booting thing two or three times over the last year and a half. I have not tried reseating the memory or other cards yet. I don't have access to this pc right now. Is there anything that I should do to try and find out what is causing this? The pc is password protected and they have kids, is there anyway that the kids powering the pc on and off trying to figure out the password could cause something like this? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

As it is still an intermittent problem I would take the opportunity to back up anything he wouldn't want to lose, such as important documents or photos.

When just the desktop and nothing else appears, can you still bring up Task Manager and access program that way? If so, check to see if explorer.exe is runnning as a process when this happens.

You might want to take some time to work through all this link http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407 You are probably aware that different applications target different malware, so this is much more thorough that the one or two applications your friend probably uses occasionally.

If the scans bring up anything in the reports, you can start a new thread and post them as indicated in the Malware Forum and an Authorized Malware Fighter will assist you.

 

Thank you for your reply. I will see about bringing up the task manager the next time it decides to act up. I will also work through the link you suggested. I have used that before and with the help of the great peple here I have had much success. I have never seen the computer act up like that. When I get over there it boots up normally. Intermittent problems are frustrating. Again thank you for the reply, it gives me something to start with.

 

I am back again. I should have that pc in my posession today. Here is part of an email he sent me with what is going on...
hello.
yes it is me again. the computer upstairs is back to it's old tricks again. i installed that graphics card, and rebooted the computer, the first sign of problems i noticed was that all of the lower icons were gone. the start menu and the works. then i powered down by pushing the power button, and then all i get is the black screen of death. computer powers up, but nothing on the screen.
I will post again when I have the computer in front of me.

 

OK.but can he tell you what was on the blue screen of death.Next time when bsod come uptell him to tell you what was on the bsod cos we can see what is the problem with this comp.but we want to know exact words and numbers.And buy the way is this problem concist in safe mode?

 

I have the computer in my posession now. The first thing I did is remove the new graphics card. Then I booted the pc, I went back to the onboard graphics for now. So far I have not been able to get it to act up like he says it is. He also told me there has been no error messages or anything like that, just a black screen. I was going to work through the malware removal guide just to see if there was anything lurking, but I cannot get the pc to boot into safe mode usin the F8 key like the guide suggests. I just tried using msconfig and that doesn't work for safe mode either. Now it won't boot into windows at all.

 

Is there a way to repair what has happened, or is a reinstall necessary? His system only has recovery disc's, so I searched the web and downloaded a thing to make 6 floppy disc's to get the recovery console. I have an original windows xp disc but I could not get the machine to boot from the cd drive even with changing the BIOS. I did get it to boot from the floppy drive and load the recovery console, but I am not familiar with using the console so I am unsure what to do. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. I will check tomorrow to see if there are any replies.

 

Could someone please give me an answer as to if this is repairable without a reinstall or not?

 

Ok,
I searched online and found a site that listed 8 commands to get windows to boot again. It worked. I can boot into windows now, but I still can't boot into safe mode using the F8 key. Using the F8 key it brings me to the screen for choosing what you want to do. I choose safe mode then it reboots and brings me back to the same screen. I am afraid to try using MSCONFIG because that is what got me into the mess to begin with. So my question now is how can I get the machine to boot into safe mode? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Also since I have been able to boot successfully it has not acted the way my friend says it has.

 

The repair part is already done. I can successfully boot into windows. I am trying to figure out why I can't boot into safe mode. I want to run some scans in safe mode to make sure there is no malware lurking in the shadows. From what I have been seeing online about not being able to access safe mode has something to do with Nero InCD which this machine has. I am going to uninstall that program tomorrow and see if it works for me like it has everyone else. Thank you for your reply though.

 

You can still run the scans in normal mode if you suspect malware. It will just take longer than if you ran them in safe mode as it will be scanning everything.

How did you get on with the uninstall of Nero InCD?

 

Hi Lev,
I went into add/remove programs and clicked on Nero Suite and clicked change/remove. That brought up a Nero menu for what to uninstall, I uninstalled InCD, and InCD reader. Now I can boot into safe mode with no problem using the F8 key. There is some kind of bug in that part of the program from what I have seen on many discussion boards. It prevents the pc from booting into safe mode, so far I have not found the solution it is suppose to be released as an update. I don't think my friend uses that part of the program.

I am currently running the scans in safe mode to see if there is any malware lurking. So far the scans have been clean. I am using the guide that is on this site because it has worked so well for me before. I thought that malware might be part of the intermittent non booting issue that I originally started this thread for.

This is the link that I found information on how to get the pc to boot again after I used MSCONFIG to force a safe boot http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_windows_xp. I didn't know if that was the right thing to do or not, but I felt I didn't have anything to lose.

Is there anything I should look for as to why this pc has this intermittent boot issue described earlier in this thread? Thanks in advance.