Windows XP Booting Problem

[NoKtEm]

Hey, thanks for taking the time to read this.. htis is really frustrating me and i'm on the edge of declaring my resignition from computers forever >_< ... well not really but u get my drift =P well it all started this morning when I turned on my computer and my computer would just restart after the bar was done loading and when Windows XP just appears with it's lovely blue screen logo. It kinda displayed a pure blue screen with some white letters before it rebooted (i haven't set it to not reboot on the error yet) so I just kinda sighed and picked to do safe mode with network support the next time it booted. As windows loaded, it displayed all the files and drivers.. and as it came to MVP.sys (i'm assuming it's the last driver to load) it kinda thinks for awhile and then it restarts. Not panicking yet, of course, I go back and choose just regular safe mode, maybe it was the network card i thought... but the same thing happened, MVP.. then BAM reboot. At this point I decided I might as well unclock everything and just set it to factory settings, 800 mhz, but i let the voltage stay up at 2 to get max'ed stability. By now i started to get a little frustrated, I reseated the memory, and everything... eventually I took out all my components (cd-rom, sound card, network card, zip drive...etc.) except for the essentials to boot up the computer.. same thing. Getting a little bit angry by now, wasted a couple of hours of my little life here, I decided to just forget it and pop in the windows XP cd and see what i can do with the recovery thing. Here's where things started to get weird... the Windows XP would just crash after the "starting windows" screen... the screen would flicker and display all black. :mad: So I unplugged everything (including my hard drive) except my cd-rom drive to see if windows would at least start from the set up screen, and alas.. nothing. I'm so confused, just yesterday i was running fold@home for 2 days straight without any problems and now i can't even boot up windows through the setup. :( anyone have any suggestions or seen this before?

System Specs

Duron 800
iwill kk266
crucial 256 sdram Pc133 (just bought it so i know this isn't the problem)
water cooled, running at about 32 degrees celsius right now
full load is about 45

anyone have any ideas?

thanks for reading this .. i know it's kinda long so it'd chase away a couple lazy americans here =P

-David

[beezee]

do you have your processor unlocked? Sometime that could be the problem. Things get all screwy after having it unlocked for a while. Either that or it was not a clean unlock. If you did in fact unlock it, then I would suggest wiping it clear and putting the cpu back in clean and try it out. When booting up, try get back into safe mode to see if it works. If you can boot up in safe mode then reboot into regular.... hope it works... good luck! :)

[repo man11]

Don't be so sure that the RAM is good because you just bought it. I'd run memtest86 to rule it out. It does sound like some sort of hardware problem to me. How were your voltage readings before you started having problems?

[NoKtEm]

well.. I just tried to update the bios.. and it .. just .. CRASHED... oh my God... why do You hate me?

[NoKtEm]

well i didn't have my processor unlocked (although i was planning on doing it today) and now that my bios is gone, thing is .. im' way too poor to replace a chip or new mobo

what ever... sigh

life is like one of those jokes that really isn't that funny

[-=Mr_B=-]

You know what circut is the bios?
Is it removable?
Could you find a similar somewhere else?

(IMPORTANT)

With old style AWARD bios it is not to hard.. Get same size and power dont care to much about the rest.. Switchbios to the "wrong" one, boot. Switch to the other one and start the flash utill..

With newer boards it is not really much harder. BUT, I WOULD ADVICE TO GET A BIOS OF THE SAME MANAFACTURERAS THAT IS MOST LIKELY TO WORK, IF POSSIBLE FOR THE SAME TYPE OF MOBO!!!

OK.. Done yelling.. But get it right.. and there is NO danger.. Dont get it right.. And have two Mobos with no bios.
If your mobo has its bios soldered on, Get a socket and solder in its place and do as above, Or simply get a hold of the manafacturor and ask em what it would cost to fix it. (To much i guess, But might be cheaper then a new PC)
I've never done this to anything more hightech then a P2 but it should still work, I know peps who have done it. Mainly peps that cheat with there logos and so on.

I sure hope no one that tossed there mobo over a bad BIOS reads this...

Hope it helps you..
Good luck!
B!

[NoKtEm]

thanks a lot, I'm not as frustrated now, kinda cooled off... the weirdest thing is that when i boot up it tells me the bios is messed up and runs the flash and tells me to put in a disk with the bios on it... but the update just won't work :-/ kinda weird, maybe im' suppose to put the versino i had on there before or something?

[NoKtEm]

is it possible the reason why the bios isn't updating correctly the same reason why windows XP refuses to boot? maybe my CPU is messed up or something

[Jirnsum]

Could be something weird in the processor or memory. I'd test them both in a friend's comp, or borrow a CPU and mem to test your own board. Hope you get it sorted out...

[DreamingWolf]

Did you ever take out your vid card and put it back in so that windows would have to redetect it? At one point I was experiencing reboots at the exact same spot. Thought my system was overclocked, but no. Then got BSOD about video card and was sure I had fried it. Ended up that the drivers were mangled and the more times it crashed the more mangled they became.
I bring this up because the GUI is kicking in right at the points (after the little progress bar or the MVP driver in safe mode)

As for the Bios, I would clear everything in there using the Clear CMOS jumper on your MOBO and see if that helps. I wouldn't hold my breath but it's worth a chance.

Good Luck:cool:

[NoKtEm]

Ok here's the things I've done so far, please read on.. i know at some point someone will know what happened

First I tried my geforce 3 Ti500 in another computer, and it worked fine (actually the computer i've been using to post here)

I then tested my memory using memtest86 and it passed fine

At this point I figured it was either my CPU or Motherboard.. so I sat here thinking.. untill I finnally decided to swap hard drives with my other computer to see if this computer runs windows 98 fine.. and it did

So now i'm at a point where I'm frustrated beyond belief, the windows XP installation won't even run when there is no hard disk connected but it runs windows 98 fine?? argh.. maybe after months of XP usage it finnally decided to not be compatible with something.. haha what ever, anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: btw, for the bios thing.. I took out my CPU and the thermal pad from the previous heatsink (before i had time to get soem artic silver) was stuck all around the die, and it kinda melted down all around so I cleaned it up a bit and the bios update thing worked... dunno if there was an association but hey! bios is fixed :)

[NoKtEm]

bump bump

[stenchhunt]

hmmm sounds very familiar :)

its a page file fault me thinks (had the same prob for ages)

had xp running sweet solid then bang that blue screen and white text

its definitely your ram

I had a new 256mb stick and would not give up on it.

since it went in the bin and a new 512 installed never a prob and now I have rdram and still solid as a rock

if you have some other ram then use it or send the new one back and get another. You'll have to reformat aswell, I had a nightmare trying to fix it

GOOD LUCK

[NoKtEm]

hmm but i stressed tested it with memtest86 :-/ how many times does it have to pass untill i can really rule it out? i just let the thing run through once

-David

[Oni]

Memtest is good, but even so, it's not stressing the RAM like loading an OS would. Swap your RAM and see if it starts to like you. I think that would be a good course of action.

[stenchhunt]

I work for an IT company and we handle rma returns from OEM's like Gateway, Compaq, IBM etc etc, we test all returns and believe me that the amount of returns that pass testing is unbelievable. But a hell of a lot actually fail when used in day to day usage. Hard drives are the main one but ram is another, especially with the speeds of machines these days, if you have a weak link it will be found out :)

I think it also has something to do with xp fast shutdown, as every time I got it my machine would be running a treat, restart or shutdown for a while and next boot.....Blue screen

the only other thing could be hdd, but I still use mine so I feel thats ok.

Ram is dirt cheap and that solved it for me

[NoKtEm]

thanks a lot! i'll try this out when i get some $$$

-David

[NoKtEm]

got a few new sticks of 256 and the problem still exists =( i guess it's either the CPU or PSU now :-/ haha coin flip to see which one i should buy?

[Heat]

I know how you feel. Man, but a new PC made it all better. :)

I'd go for the new PSU first. Good luck!

[stenchhunt]

damn, sorry, the ram worked for me, although I have now got a 400 watt enermax psu but I am certain it went before I put this in

hope you get it sorted, I had it for a few months and it frustrated the hell out of me although I am now expert at recovering data :) (just get one of the techs at work to copy it over onto a new drive and burn it)

good luck

[chittnp]

i had a problem a few weeks ago, where i was playing some songs in winamp...and my computer (running xp pro) just decided to reboot....booted fine...i started listening to winamp again....than bam! BSOD. and for about 2 days I couldnt get xp to boot....so i put the xp disk back in, and did a "repair" , but i dont know what it repaired because halfway through it just rebooted and went into xp without a hitch and has been working fine eversince......I would try putting the disk in....seems to make xp happy sometimes