Freeze on bios load

hi All

I have a Dell Dimension 9100 running XP SP3 all patches etc up to date with most recent bios. All runing reliably for years until...

I installed a generic USB bluetooth adapter and installed the Toshiba Bluetooth stack replacing Microsoft's inadequate version.

During the Stack install I encountered BSOD and the following boot failed. It just froze on the Dell logo with the loading "gauge" nearly complete... never looked like starting Windows boot.

A couple of restarts later (just holding the button in, waiting till it restarted) and it finally loaded normally.

This has been happening on and off for a week.

In one case it froze and I couldn't get it to boot so tried selecting "setup" before the " gauge" reached the point it usually freezes at. It went to bios, I quit out (with not changes) and it loaded normally from there.

When it does finally load, everything seems to be running normally including the bluetooth.

Any suggestions? I'm reluctant to shutdown at all incase it NEVER comes back

Thanks in advance

Dins

 

Looks like I've solved it or at least worked around it.

The bluetooth dongle is causing some coniption with the POST process as it needs to load USB functionality (or how else would my USB keyboard work when I need to go into BIOS set up).

When I take out the dongle for the reboot, the problem goes away. Clearly there is something in the USB dongle that POST doesn't like... though all the other USB devices: keyboard, printer, IR mouse dongle; ipod have caused no such problem.

Hope this helps soemone else.

Dins