Win XP likes to freeze at boot, It happens after a crash/BSOD

[Aft3rSh0x]

This is certainly strange. If I ever get a crash or BSOD in winxp, I press the reset button and load up winxp again - when its got to the splash screen (with the scrolling meter), it stops and freezes halfway.

To fix this, I have to load up safe mode, restart again and winxp loads up fine. Or I turn off the machine completely from the power switch at the back and turn it back on and winxp loads fine.

I've had 2 formats. I thought my XP install was bad, but I've installed XP twice and so its obviously not an XP problem? I've also flashed my MSI-6380 Pro K7T266 Mobo to the latest BIOS, and recreated my partition tables.

I also have a VERY weird problem with the ATI Radeon 64mb DDR VIVO card. The only drivers that work with it is the very old beta 3211 drivers. Anything over 3276 and the latest official 66xx drivers and betas just makes my monitor go on standby when running the directx display test or when a game changes resolution/color depth. System doesn't respond and have to press the reset button.

Could it be related?

To add, I also told windows xp to run chkdsk at next boot, ticking the two options it had. On next reboot it checked my NTFS disk, then rebooted, and another screen came up saying that its finished checking the disk.... and nothing else happens, winxp doesn't load up, its like its paused. I pressed the reset button and it performs the chkdsk again, and it got stuck in a f'king loop! had to repair my XP install and that caused a BSOD with only three words, "Unknown Hardware error" IIRC. Had to format.
😡

 

[Qumahlin]

wow, thats alot of hardware issues for one box! have you tried a COMPLETE harddrive wipe and reinstall of XP? and made sure ya had all the win updates? unknown hardware errors are hard to troubleshoot, does it give you a stop code at all?

 

[Mister Zee]

Not much more to do here than remove all the unrequired hardware from your box, and try to install XP again, and see if the problem comes back. Put everything back gradually until you can reproduce the problem. Try to swap your cards in different PCI combinations to see if it's not a conflict. Do you have a network card? Have you tried to get a Video Bios update for your video card!? (yes video cards have bios's too!). That's all I can think of.. If you have a friend that has a spare Video card, or wouldn't mind lending you one to test it, would be a good thing too...

Have you tried the ATI support forums too? Maybe there's something there about that...

 

[Aft3rSh0x]

Originally posted by Qumahlin
wow, thats alot of hardware issues for one box! have you tried a COMPLETE harddrive wipe and reinstall of XP?

Yes, I formatted and recreated my partition tables

and made sure ya had all the win updates? unknown hardware errors are hard to troubleshoot, does it give you a stop code at all?

No stop code at all, a strange BSOD it was, just 3 messages.

 

[Aft3rSh0x]

Mister Zee - I guess I will try what you suggested, the NIC and the Sound card is the only components I can take out.

I've not seen a video bios for a ATI Radeon 64mb DDR card before - Can you point me to one if it does exist?

I've also checked the Rage3d.com forums and found nothing to the problem I'm having. I will check on ATI's own support forums.

If this is of any help - I also used to have a dual boot of XP and Win2k, when XP crashed I booted into Win2k instead and win2k froze on the splash screen, an identical way like XP does.

 

[Mister Zee]

You were right for the video drivers for this card, there are none yet. It only happens with some cards, when they have to modify something hardcoded in the card. But make sure you have those drivers:

http://www.ati.com/support/products...&cboProducts=RADEON+64MB+DDR+VIVO&cmdNext=GO!

Try the suggested ones.. and if you stil have the same problem, try the Beta ones (who knows!?)

As for the NIC and Sound card, I relly wouldn't be surprised if that would be the problem.... Try swapping the cards on different PCI slots and see what happens.

 

[Aft3rSh0x]

I've already used hundreds of latest official and beta drivers thats ever been released (as stated in my first post) and only the 3211 drivers work.