Re: Boot trouble help

In article <00unt1lo5i38ogghbpq8bj12pqmtt41r10@xxxxxxx>, Rick
<rblythe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I have a P4PE800 SE with 2.8 gig Prescott, no overclocking. Lately I
> have been having trouble with boot up. The system hangs at the
> Windows Professional logo boot screen, the moving dot loading bar at
> the bottom keeps moving but the computer doesn't boot up. Doesn't
> matter if it is a cold boot or after having been on for a period of
> time. Other than this the system runs fine, no lockups or unexplained
> problems during gaming or other activities. It may boot fine for five
> times in a row then hang for several times, no pattern. All cooling
> fans are running fine and the Prescott has a Zalman cooler. 400 watt
> Antec power supply. No new hardware lately, all software updates and
> drivers up to date. Anyway it is really a pain in the ***.
> Appreciate any ideas I may have overlooked.
>
> Thanks

Do you have a backup for the hard drive ?

You might consider doing a backup of the disk, then go to the
hard drive manufacturer's web site, and download their disk
test software. The one I used was non-destructive, which means
it only did read operations, but ideally a test program should
be doing both reads and writes. The test program should also
look at the S.M.A.R.T. stats for the drive, to determine if
the drive is about to fail. You might also consider using a
program that reads the S.M.A.R.T. statistics while you are
in Windows, to see how healthy the drive is - it is hard to
interpret the numbers, and it requires a good deal of research
to try to interpret them on your own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring%2C_Analysis_and_Reporting_Technology

I have no idea whether this is a software problem or a hardware
problem - perhaps the first thing I'd investigate, is whether there
is a way to get the logo boot screen to go away, so you can see
any text underneath. I don't know whether WinXP can be run
such that it displays text, instead of the "progress bar",
but it sure would be nice to see the equivalent of a Linux
boot process, with its copious text messages.

Paul
.