Boot problems

[blutach]

Just started happening. When I reboot (or turn on) the PC just stops and does nothing after the initial Windows XP screen and doesn't show the mouse cursor or get to the Welcome/logon screen.

Funny thing is, if I do a hardware reset, I get to the Windows didn't load normally last time whaddaya wanna do screen and I select load normally and it usually works.

Initially thinking it was my overclocking, I reset the BIOS to failsafe but no luck. So, I figure it's got to be a messed up driver somewhere. I installed a new webcam recently but that's all.

Is there some sort of log that can ID what driver is messing me up?

Everest hardware report attached (in case it's a HW issue).

TIA

Regards

[Chewy]

brand name and model of power supply?

was this aggrevated by your leaving it off for a week?

case good and clean?

we can eliminate heat and fans on the northbridge and vid card

edit

[Chewy]

what's the dimm voltage? and why are you running that memory as cas3?

looks like everest home is a little too old to correctly identify the mobo and memory properties

you might look into what chipset driver version versus that bios revision you are running

google say that memory isn't stable at 208 unless vdimm is pretty high
you might have to lower the fsb a notch

[Chewy]

why are you running that memory as cas3?

looks like the spd info from everest is wrong

also says cas2 w/ 2T command rate

besides for the memory stability issue, the raptor's seem to have more troubles booting, may be related to them not reaching 10K as fast as 7200 drives?

[blutach]

A bit of info.

• Case/PS is Thermaltek Soprano mid tower with 430w PS
• Boots from the WD IDE drive, not SATA (it passes the SMART tests)
• The memory settings are same as before (I reloaded them) and are rock solid - I will do a 12 hour ORTHOS test later. Remember, the failsafe settings also had the problem, so I do not believe it's the memory or overclocking.
• This started happening before I went away (the machine was left on anyway and performed all its tasks OK while I was away).
• I did do a cleanout of the case a couple of weeks before. There's little dust that I can see.

Here's the memory settings - they work fine (or have until now). Slot 3 for the SPD is the same info as slot 1.



Thanks for the help.

Regards

[Chewy]

I don't think it's bad memory, look at the descrepancy in what spd reports?

the power supply might be a little weak, but your vid card doesn't take much, those raid drives and the WD pata?

try editing your boot.ini file

The entry "timeout={ some decimal number}" is the time in seconds that the system waits before it loads the default operating system.

go for 40 or 50

with only one then you might not slow down at all

could enable boot logging

[blutach]

Will try that. BTW - safe mode works fine.

Regards

[blutach]

OK. Booted (this time) with time=50. What is the name of the log? Is it ntbtlog.txt? Cos that one seems to go back for a bit. If so, see attached.

Regards

[Chewy]

let's make sure your bios is up to snuff

[blutach]

Now, 4 bad boots in a row on those settings. New bootlog attached (which shows nothing new, I think).

It seems that it goes past the initial screen, and when it is loading the drivers (black screen before welcome), there is a noise, kinda like the drive has stopped. No lights, no nuttin.

Regards

[blutach]

And a couple more bad boots . Message in Safe mode with networking is "Press esc to stop loading SPTD.sys" (if I press nothing it still loads - this is part of Daemon Tools, which has never given me issues before.)

Regards and thanks

[blutach]

Reset the settings I changed via MSCONFIG (boot.ini). Interesting to note that there is a boot.ini.backup in WINDOWS/pss but no boot.ini file anywhere (system.ini and win.ini are in C:\WINDOWS). Could this be an issue?

(Finally got it to boot after entry to safe modeand 3 more goes after that).

Regards

[Chewy]

well I would run chkdisk from safe mode

probably need to download and run drive diagnostic for the boot drive from dos boot

have you tried a restore point?

[blutach]

This looks a lot like the issue

http://www2.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/sho...t=9327&page=10 (and afterwards)

What do you think? Update NVidia drivers/delete the SPTD driver (see comment above for safe mode boot). Just wish I could find which one it craps out on.

And yes, the first time I noticed it (a couple of weeks back) I tried a system restore without luck.

Regards

[Chewy]

go to the safe mode screen, enable boot logging and see if you can capture a log

write down the time when you do it, that's the only log that might give us a clue