2 Months troublefree then XP wouldn't boot?

[yellowvespa]

Last night I shut her off to make a quick run over to Fry's. Got home and my baby wouldn't boot. It has me baffled. It's this years standard setup >> Asus PB4533-VM, 512mb PC2700, 60G IBM 75GXP (read further) 2.4 P4/533 at 2600, Windows XP home, etc. etc. She's been flawless and troublefree, CPU temp always hovers at about 100f, etc.

What I did:

Dropped the FSB back to 133: no good (post recorded correctly)

Removed the AGP card (I have onboard video also): no good

Removed the IDE controller and PCMCIA PCI cards: no good

Went to default settings in the BIOS: no good

Tried Safe Mode: no good

Here's what happens. Power her up and she posts as normal ... CPU speed, RAM etc. then there is a long delay, finally the Windows XP home screen comes on and the green bar moves back and forth in the box. Then the screen goes dark and she just sits there. I took the hard drive out and put it in my spare computer and was able to open it up and move around just fine. Tried to run Nortons while there but couldn't (The spare computer doesn't have Nortons installed)(I assume it was a Nortons thing as it wasn't the host computer). The hard drive works fine and I had no problems in there at all moving around and opening things up. The latest XP updates and Nortons anti-virus as of that morning !!

Any ideas? Thanks

 

[RustyNale]

If your psu in your other comp is rated high enough ( 300W +), try switching it with the comp with the problem.

 

[yellowvespa]

Good thought ... I have a spare PS here and I'll try it right now.

Thanks,
Frank

 

[DAPUNISHER]

It's a fairly common issue with XP and is addressed in MS KB link before you start reading that whole KB article I have a suggestion that may save you the time and effort, boot from your XP CD and go to the recovery console and use chkdsk then use fixboot and if necessary fixMBR. that should resolve the issue, if not then start reading that article

 

[yellowvespa]

Thank you for the response(s). It wasn't the power supply so I went into recovery. Chkdsk said the volume is just fine and fixboot did it's thing. I then went to fixmbr and it warned me that I could loose things (which I'm trying to avoid) so I skipped it and tried to boot it up. Same exact scenario. I noticed while looking over the info at MS that this was for boot failures prior to the OSLoader screen. I do get the osloader XP screen and it's after that that she hangs. I'll try anything and welcome the input. Should I try the master boot record fix? Thinking about it .. it does boot, it's after the osloader screen that it hangs.

Thank you,
Frank

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Well, you could try different ram or if you have more than 1 stick trying each seperately to eliminate them from the mix. If ram isn't the problem I strongly recommend trying fixMBR as I've used it after nuking an install by extreme overclocking and it saved me a full reinstall I lost nothing. Good luck and post back how you make out P.S. If you don't have everything you need backed up then let this be a lesson to you about the prudence of doing so

 

[yellowvespa]

Hi,

The only thing I really wanted is my saved mail folder. I made a rule to save all incoming mail and I have a years worth. Really handy. And my address book. I've got the hard drive running on this computer now and for the love of Mike, it won't let me transfer the files around. Even in Outlook, it tells me to get bent.

On the memory, it posts fine and is good quality Samsung PC2700 but I'll give it a shot. Funny thing, This computer that I'm on right now is an Abit TH7II-raid MB with Samsung Rambus. It has the old 1.8 Northwood (I flashed the BIOS) . ... To the naked eye and normal user interface (ME!!) this is faster and smoother than the 2.4 was (at 2600Mhz). This one is running a tad under 2100Mhz. Is it me or is the Rambus/850 chipset that much more in sync with the P4?

Frank

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Did you install the HDD as a slave in the other rig? or is it the master? were you able to boot from it to windows successfully if so? I still suggest you run fixMBR though, and as to the rambus feeling faster than the DDR, since your overclock was a mild one the rambus is almost undoubtedly providing superior bandwidth which is what the Northwoods thrive on so it isn't your imagination

 

[Officerdown]

Sorry, this probably won't help you but I had the same problem. It turned out for me that it was something to do with my CD ROM. One day it wouldn't load up like you said. So for some odd reason I decided to hit the eject button on the CD ROM and than it loaded XP. Odd, there wasn?t even a CD in it. Oh well, just FYI I guess. I was using a LiteOn, it was a piece.


Officer

 

[yellowvespa]

Hi .. it was installed as the slave ....

BUT .. here is the latest. After the last post I re-installed the HD in the suspect machine and went to boot it up. The door bell sounded .. it was my neighbor, she needed a cup of sugar. Being single, I had the computer setup on the kitchen counter and as we talked and she tried to decide whether she wanted brown sugar or raw unwashed sugar ( I don't have bleached white sugar), the darn thing booted into Windows. Probably about ten minutes to do so! I wasn't thinking right because I had infection on my mind but I went right to Nortons and started a full scan. I'm on cable and always worried about that. Either way she started to scan ... slow .. hanging up for a minute here and 20 seconds there. With the scan almost done, she rebooted herself and that was it. Still trying to get to Windows again and do a restore. What's your thought on the slow scan and self-reboot before the scan was finished? And the symptoms ....

Frank

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Well given all that you have tried already and the inability to get it to work correctly even slaved in the other system, AND given that it now evidences all the symptoms of a dying HDD I.E. not resolved by trying on different IDE cable, not resolved by using in different system and thus even a different IDE controller along with all the other different hardware, and here it comes...wait for it....wait for it....AND given the fact that you are using the infamous 75GXP DEATH STAR I would say it's time to download IBM's HDD diagnostic utility and run it to see if it finds any problems with the drive