Strange problem at start up

[trackrat]

When I boot into Xp, the Asus splash page shows as normal, then the XP screen comes on and the green bar starts moving across, then the screen goes grey, and then black and after about 10 seconds the mouse arrow appears and it boots into windows normally.
This started to happen about a month ago, and yesterday it just stopped on the grey screen and I had to do a restore with Acronis as I could not get it to load in safe mode.
After doing the restore it still has the same problem although at the moment it boots into windows.

My antivirus and firewall are up to date and I have all the patches from Microsoft.

My specs are Asus A8N-SLi motherboard, AMD x2 3800 processor, 2 x 1gb Crucial 3200 memory 2 x 160 sata and a 160 ata hard drive.

Has anyone come across this problem, if not I will try a new install.

 

[GoNz0]

monitor blanking mid boot ?
your not running a 7900GTX are you ?

 

[trackrat]

GoNz0, I am running two XFX 6600GT's in SLi mode with the latest Nvidia drivers.
Also I have read somewhere that running one card with the latest nvidia drivers has caused problems.

 

[GoNz0]

i get the same, its the bloody drivers that do it, i cant see my boot time defrags going off either.

 

[trackrat]

I tried a repair install, and no good, so I started to look at the hardware.
As I run two graphics cards in SLi mode, I took one out and tried that out, and no difference, so I then swapped the cards over, still no difference.
The only thing left now is the Nvidia drivers, so I am going back to the previous version and see what happens.