Hell on earth for me today.

Hey guys,This isn't really a help topic but more of a topic to try and figure out what might have went wrong.

Well it was strange My PC has been working perfectly fine for ages but then yesterday came.My internet connection cut out on me (like it usually does) and i had to restart my comp to make windows reconnect.Then to my horror it happened.I restarted the PC and it would go up to the "windows XP" boot screen and freeze on me.So i figured no big deal i would go into safe mode and restore to an earlier time....WRONG trying to go into safe mode produced the same result.So then i pull out my good ol' XP pro CD and run the repair tool.Still no luck same thing happens again,i tryed repairing the mbr and running chkdsk.Once again no luck.Finally as a last resort i tryed reinstalling XP over top of the original XP.Thats where hell broke lose.The PC would just freeze on XP boot screen and auto reboot after a few moments.

To say the least i ended up having to do a total format and reinstall everything.PC is now working perfe3ctly again.But the question is what out of the blue could have caused this?I have all the latest Xp updates and SP2,antivirus and firewalls also with latest updates.Someone mentioned that it could be my hard drive going bad but i see none of the normal signs of a HDD failure.Have any of you ever had an issue like this?

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Originally Posted by bhxtyrant

Hey guys,This isn't really a help topic but more of a topic to try and figure out what might have went wrong.

Well it was strange My PC has been working perfectly fine for ages but then yesterday came.My internet connection cut out on me (like it usually does) and i had to restart my comp to make windows reconnect.Then to my horror it happened.I restarted the PC and it would go up to the "windows XP" boot screen and freeze on me.So i figured no big deal i would go into safe mode and restore to an earlier time....WRONG trying to go into safe mode produced the same result.So then i pull out my good ol' XP pro CD and run the repair tool.Still no luck same thing happens again,i tryed repairing the mbr and running chkdsk.Once again no luck.Finally as a last resort i tryed reinstalling XP over top of the original XP.Thats where hell broke lose.The PC would just freeze on XP boot screen and auto reboot after a few moments.

To say the least i ended up having to do a total format and reinstall everything.PC is now working perfe3ctly again.But the question is what out of the blue could have caused this?I have all the latest Xp updates and SP2,antivirus and firewalls also with latest updates.Someone mentioned that it could be my hard drive going bad but i see none of the normal signs of a HDD failure.Have any of you ever had an issue like this?

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I had something similar and I guessed that it was my graphics board. Because when it hung on the XP startup, I tried changing the graphics board and it worked... when I tried putting the original card back in it hung.

I figured it was some strange goof with the drivers and hardware causing the system to hang. Of course your situation could have been totally different. BUt I had had the maching running for a while, all up to date everything humming like a H2 on the Santa Monica Freeway.

Hmm, yes. Newer graphics drivers, even sound card drivers are known to have conflicts with older motherboard chip set drivers. Take my old gateway for example. Once in a while, it will just hang like that. So what I have to do is to enter safemode and uninstall the drivers for everything. Then it will boot normally and then I'll reinstall the drivers.

Its has a old GeForce 2 MX/MX 400 and ForceWare is bit problematic on the outdated gateway MB driver. Unfortunately, gatway pulled out of Singapore, and I have no support for it and so can't update the MB chipset drivers.

Hey BB yeah i know what you mean i had the issue with random reboots back when i upgraded my Radeon 9200 drivers to catalyst 5.8,which caused me to have to downloagrade back to 5.7.I've had this particular comp running without any problems for over 3 years now.i usually leave it on 24/7 unless i plan to be away from home for a long time.Never had a problem though.I guess it was just about time that it needed to be cleaned out.It was starting to get a bit slower and i notice a nice little boost in performance sicce the format.

This time im glad i took the TZ guys advice and got a copy of Acronis TrueImage after i reinstalled all my updates and programs,ran virus scans ect i made a full backup.Not taking any more chances this time lol.

I don't think my graphics card was at fault,i've had this same card in this PC since i first built it and it has always worked fine :) .but for me it wouldn't really hang.I don't know how to explain it.It would get to the XP boot screen (wih the little blue loading bar) and it would seem to be loading (the bar would move like usual) but i noticed that the hard drive activity light on the front of my tower wasnt blinking at all.usually it blinks like crazy.So i let the PC sit for about 30 minutes and it just seemed to be stuck in that boot loop.restarting and going itno safe mode had the same result.So i couldn't boot period.

i have seen this problem also, at first i thought it was the card. i bought a different one, same problem. it turned out to be the RAM, maybe Electrostatic Discharge. either way the computer worked after i replaced the RAM.

Damn wish i would have known that before beelzebub,I would have tried it.But i had no way of accessing the net to psot here once the PC crashed.Oh well :) glad to see im not the only one lol

Sorry for the doublepost,I was just using my PC when it suddenly did the random reboot crap again.After a little searching i found out that it was caused by one of my device drivers.So my question is what would be the best was of tracking down exactly what driver caused the issue withour uninstalling all drivers.I have a weird feeling it's going to end up beng my graphics card drivers (which i have had the same issue with in the past) i just want to be certain before goig through the trouble only to find out it's something else.

Did you test your memory with something like Memtest 86 ?

No i haven't yet tested my memory mainly due to lack of time.I think i will have to give it a shot tomorrow when i am away.