XP freezing on startup page

[atc01]

Hi, new member here

System: Toshiba Satellite M50, 2 yrs old.

Recently (3 months) I have been having trouble getting my system to 'unhibernate'. Usually I would just try to not allow it to hibernate to prevent this problem, now I wish I had addressed it sooner. Usually, I had to power of the computer with no shut-down, and restart it (I would just select 'start windows normally') and it was fine. Last time this happened, it would not start. everything was as normal until I got to the XP loading page (with the blue progress bar). Then it would freeze. The good news is that I was able to start it in safe mode, and burn data DVD's, so there is nothing on the hard drive that I really care about. Not really knowing what I was doing, I decided to use the 'product recovery disc' that came with the computer (sounds like a good idea, right?) so, it took about 40 minutes, and then asked to reboot. on startup, it unzipped some files, and then went to a similar looking XP loading page (without the blue progress bar) and froze. Any attempts to restart now in any mode are met with an error message saying that 'setup was incomplete'

I'm thinking that using the recovery disc was a bad idea. Should I just give up, and take it to a professional? Any suggestions would be amazing.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Do you know if you started the reinstallation process of Windows (that's what it sounds like)? Were you just running a repair with the recovery disk?

From my understanding of the ACPI specification, when you put your system in S4 ("hibernation") it stores your current activity and system state on a non-volatile storage device such as your HDD.

If your PC is having issues installing Windows and coming out of hibernation, I would run one of the HDD diagnostic utilities here and test your HDD.

Post back with the results .

 

[atc01]

Thanks for your response

Firstly, I have been trying to run a diagnostic that is applicable to my hard drive without any success, but I think I might be doing it wrong. I tried both the Hitachi/IBM and the Maxtor one, and I cant gt either one to boot on my computer. The laptop in question does not have a floppy drive, so creating a bootable diskette is out of the question, but both of these companies offer a 'CD image' that you can supposedly burn and boot from. I have tried this multiple times (on multiple computers) and I cant get the DFT program to boot. I haven't been doing anything special, just downloading the xxx.iso file to my desktop and copying it onto a CD. Then I reboot my computer, hit F8, and select the CD drive, which to my understanding is all that I need to do. However, on both the laptop in question, and my PC, the boot up process simply continues as if nothing has changed, and windows starts up (and in the case of my laptop promptly freezes.)

Regarding you initial question, I believed that I was reinstalling Windows, but I am starting to question that now. Toshiba includes a 'product recovery DVD' that supposedly reloads your computer as it was from the factory, but that may not include XP. I may have to get my hands on a real copy of XP (I do have a good code, just no disk) if that is the problem.

Again, thanks for replying.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

The OEM CD key that you probably are referring to won't work with a real copy of XP.

Are you actually burning the CDs as images? You can't just burn them as data CDs.

 

[tonylukac]

CD Image Creating Software

Good freeware for creating CD ISO images is My DVD Maker at www.my-dvd-creator.com . Don't be mislead by the name DVD. It creates CD ISO bootable images also. Simply select "Burn DVD" and you'll be taken to a menu that allows burning of ISO CD images.

 

[atc01]

Thanks for the help

I ran the DFT software, it came back with Disposition Code = 0x00, which i assume is good.

The key that I was referring too comes off a XP sticker on the bottom of my laptop, at least I assume thats what it is.

 

[atc01]

Any other ideas out there?