black screen after xp splash... sometimes

Hi

I was hoping I could get some help. Maybe someone has gone through this too...

The machine I'm using is in my sig. I have xp pro sp2. I also just recently purchased an x800 pro and am using the catalyst 5.9 drivers.

The symptoms are this. Sometimes (maybe one out of ten times) I'll be booting, get passed the white line progress bar, get to the WIndows xp splash screen and then it just hangs at a black screen. I have to hard boot to get it started. Windows is hanging... that I know for sure because the disk activity stops to a rythmic flashing of the HD activity LED.

What's going on? What should i check/try? Any help would be golden with this... I would be so thankful.

try different drives, also maybe update your mobo drivers

It sounds like either drivers or a service are not loading properly.

I would recommend booting into safe mode and uninstalling your ATI drivers. ATI is notorious for releasing bad/buggy drivers. Use a driver cleaner to remove all remaining files. Download and install newest drivers from ATI site.

This is just a guess, but worth a try. Can't hurt.

Attempt to boot into safe mode, as described above and roll back the ATI drivers. Ask yourself if anything (and I do mean anything) else has changed--new programs installed, for instance.

If there is a way to enable a logfile at boot (there may be such an option on the boot menu that you get by holding down F8), it would be wise to do so, since the last message that is written to that logfile before the hang would indicate the problem.

It may be advisable for you to drop to stock configuration, reformat + reinstall your OS (cleanly) and see if problems persist.

Good luck.

Hello,

I tried using the ATI uninstaller to clean out the drivers and install the driver fresh. This time I tried the new 5.10 catalyst driver...


Captain Newbie, that's funny because although I missed your guys' posts I ended up enabling the boot log! This is what I found...

The last line recorded is:

Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Cdfs.SYS

The next driver that would have been loaded (but is missng) is:

Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\irda.sys

Now I take that this means the Cdfs.sys driver was loaded ok but it's choking on irda.sys?

Is this triggering any ideas?

Thanks again!