Problem booting computer.. black screen with cursor

[Memnoch]

I put together a system, AMD Athlon 1.3 chip with an MSI board and DDR Ram.. and sometimes it works fine. It loads up alright. But when it has been on for awhile (like more than 30 minutes), if I restart it it will load up my memory and IDE devices, and then just before it starts loading windows it goes to a black screen with a cursor. The harddrive activity light is on but it won't go past that screen.

At first I thought it might be a heat problem so I bought some fans (one 3 pin the othe 4 pin) and installed them.... but then it went to that black screen even if it was cold or hadn't been on all night. So i disconnected the two new fans and even had to unplug a pci card to get it to boot up. I have a 300W powersupply, do I need to go up to 350 or is something else the matter? I have had to replace the chip so that is probably not a factor since it did it with both chips.. and I have had two different operating systems on it. Thanks for any info

 

[veryape]

You may have to reinstall your operating system, because it may have gotten corrupted somehow. Did you transfer it from another system without reinstalling? If so that could do it. It could also have something to do with the dual boot. You may have to set that up again, although I know it's kind of a pain in the ass but probably needs to be done.

 

[Schmaty]

It sounds simple but I would check all your connections. Good luck!

 

[gil11542]

You might try removing your PCI cards and booting with vid only, I had a SBlive card give me fits and it did the very same thing I finally had to keep moving it around until I found a PCI slot it was happy in.

 

[DodgyDoug]

Just a couple of ideas...

I have similar probs when i overclock to an 'odd' speed. Windows is uncomfortable with some clock settings.. For example you could overclock a bit it works, a bit further produces funny behaviour, bit further ok again. What these 'Odd' speeds are depend on the hardware.

Are you o/c'd.. If not have you got turbo mode (or fast mode whatever) going in the bios. If so try disabling it. If this works you could always try clocking it a bit higher than when it's turbo's and that might work to.

It could also be a currupt registry.. Does it do the same going into safe mode??? Have you got reg scan or something you can use.

Perhaps a scandisk would help... doh?

Perhaps it's a communication problem with a device attached to your system. Perhaps a device driver is trying to communicate with a device (ie scanner etc) which is working intermittantly and so the device driver isnt always getting a response and windows cannot progress until it does.... This is even more likely if the system tends to work from power off (ie the first time) but hangs on reboots.

ERmm... Thats all i can think of for the mo..

Hope that helps..

Humbly yours

 

[ZZZZZZ]

Is there a delay setting for the HDs in the BIOS. Your system could be booting to fast for the OS. Try a 1 or 2 sec delay and see if you get the problem again