XP Load/Boot problems

[john w 2008]

All,

I know a fair whack about PC's but this problem has got me going.

After some updates, exceptionally slow performance and a reboot (after installing xpsp3) I have the following problems!

1. The splash screen which shows the windows logo and has the blue bar scrolling across can sometimes be on for an eternity. The bar will stop and start stop and start...sometimes it will eventually go to a black screen and say Boot Failure...Insert system disk.

2. Sometimes however, it boots fine...this time being an example. Normal load time and good performance once loaded.

3. It always works in safe mode without fail.

4. After problem 1. Noted above, if you hit the reset button it immediatly goes to the boot failure screen...if you turn it off and on...it will go to the xp screen and may load or may fail.

specs

Asus A8N-E MOBO AMD 64 3700+ PROCESSOR 1024MB RAN (GEIL DDR 400 MHz). Nvidea 6800 GS 512MB Ram card. 200Gb Maxtor Hard drive. Pioneer DVD/RW drive and a 3.5 inch floppy. a little old, but fine for what i use it for.

any pointers on this would be much appreciated!!

Many Thanks
John

 

[snowchick7669]

Hi John,

Since it is loading in safemode I'd suggest first looking at software issues rather then hardware. Could be 3 things off the top of my head

1. Virus related, this is rather common

2. Driver related, they can be conflicting with each other and running in safemode stops all unnecessary services.

3. Software conflict, it is different then driver problems. Most common cause is Anti Virus doubling up and causing problems.

Since you can get into safemode, I'd be running through these steps here while in 'Safemode with networking' so you can download the programs

 

[john w 2008]

Thanks Snow Chick

I have done some of the scans, but im not sure it is conflicts?

I have running AVG, ADWARE, SPYBOT S&D, Thats it really, I use glary utilities as well, purely for its disk analyser tool.

I went to event log viewer and have managed to resolve many errors. I should note that an xpsp3 install failed, it restored it (and failed) and then I had to use system restore...which produced insinuous number of errors.

Anyhow...In the event log viewer there were a numerous errors as this:

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.

Its my c: drive...so my thoughts turned hardware.

I have a Maxtor 6L200M0 HD and its (I think) 190GB with 130GB partition. I know maxtors are not the best but im stuck with it for now. I went to seagate's website and downloaded the scanning tools...no errors found. I checked all physical hardware too and made a point of connecting it from a new molex with nex cable and also replacing the sata cables.

Anyway, this disk errors are still found, but are much less in number on the event log AND importantly windows seems to have booted successfully more times. Ive noticed the disk failure event log entry occurs when boot is unsuccessful.

Anyhow....two boot errors occur in the event log and one very very annoying recurring error.

The two boot errors are:

The SAVRTPEL service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.

and

The Norton AntiVirus Auto Protect Service service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the path specified.

They are both to do with norton. They appear to be trying to find the programs on startup,...but I got shot of norton a long time ago...so it seems these are trying to start...but not finding the folders...I have no idea to remove them from startup...I tried looking at msconfig start menu and registry, but with no luck.

The other event log viewer...and it recurrs, almost on an endless loop, is this.

The Application Management service was successfully sent a start control

The Application Management service entered the stopped state.

The Application Management service terminated with the following error:
The specified module could not be found.

If anyone has any ideas on this then let me know!

Thanks
John