XP FREEZING ON WELCOME SCREEN.... HELP REQUIRED!!

Damian Brown

Damian Brown

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Damian Brown
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Ok.. let's see if I can make this simple:

Yesterday morning the PC was working fine, no worries.. shutdown at the end of the session. Nothing dodgy accessed online etc.

Lunchtime I come home and the thing wouldn't get past the welcome screen, the mouse pointer still working and keyboard not frozen but the pc wouldn't boot up at all. I eventually got into safe mode (a case of not hitting f8 until the right moment)... I tried CHKDISK /R which did it's thing for hours... still no booty.

I tried a repair install... voila, i was in finally. It swapped my screens around but to all intents and purposes I was back in action. I did a bit of CS3 work and disc burning. Shutdown and went to bed. Finally.

This morning, boot up... froze at welcome screen AGAIN. Tried a repair install, didn't get me in this time, in fact it got as far as the xp set up and then went black with just the mouse pointer.

So back to safe mode. Spyware, viruses etc scanned. Clean.

Checked drivers ... system interrupt controller and unknown device, no drivers. I tried updating via windoze but no joy.

I really really don't fancy a complete fresh install right now. But I'd like to continue working and not have to resort to pc 2 or pc 3... I'm online in safe mode with networking now.

I hate computers.


Any ideas?


Ps. no wise cracks and about linux or macs, really not gonna help me at this stage and the mood i'm in won't help me replying in a polite way to such comment
 
Sounds like a disk going south to me too.

If you have a friend with a spare external USB disk it might be worth borrowing that so if/when you get your PC back up again you can back up every thing important - oh and note down all your applications and settings as well before risking shutting down again.
 
have read through the event log see if that gives any clues.
 
My first thought would be a problem with the Hard drive, although running in safe mode may indicate a driver problem.

If checking the event log shows nothing you can identify, I'd be tempted to reformat and start again. OK a real pain but may be the only answer. Hopefully you've backed up all the important data.

I would be wary of the HD though just in case its about to die
 
It sounds like your disk may be going...

Can you get in through safe mode?
If so back up your data and reinstall windows on a fresh drive.

Alternatively, take the drive out and put it in another machine as slave and back up from there.

Check your Error log by Right clicking my computer then manage and see what may have caused the problem
 
Thanks so far guys, just trying a few things. I need to chek the event log as recommended too. Also what do you think snout the system interrupt controller driver being AWOL, could that be the cause of my problems? Google research suggests it would affect boot up, I've tried updating mobo driver but can't see a change to the yellow question mark yet!

Worst case scenario I go into safe
mode, back up everything from the HD, and I mean everything 400gb) to external (while I'm out shooting a wedding tomorrow for example. Then start afresh.

If so my biggest need would be to get cs3 running exactly how I had it before... Ie workspace layout, buttons/actions etc.. Any tips in saving this?! I save the workspace regularly but don't know about transferring those settings to a fresh install. Thoughts?
 
Any interest? Event errors:
the following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: KLIF vsdatant


The KService hung on starting
 
I suspect a drive error but it could be other hardware probs. Open up and re-seat everything. Be prepared to invest in a new drive. How old is it? Drives are so cheap these days that, if I were about to reinstall everything I'd probably want to do it on a new drive. I can't rule out a motherboard problem though.

Now to the naughty bitz. You can be shot for using zone alarm. And I'm not a fan of Kaspersky either. I don't think they would clash in any way but is there a firewall with the Kaspersky suite and have you got it enabled?

My money is on the hard drive but when you rebuild your computer, do leave out zone alarm ;)

This advice is from a mac fanboy. Please ignore.
 
I'll try the reseating, that's been going through my mind to do! As for the naughty bits I didn't actually know I was still running them, I thought I'd disabled those programs!
 
Bit of a wild card this but my desktop sometimes jams up on the welcome page as well. Apparently some pc's measure the static on the mother card and won't boot up if it is too high. I fix mine by unplugging the mains lead and holding the power switch in for 20 seconds.
As I said I'm not confident it'll help but its worth a try
 
I had bad problems with Kaspersky, but it's normal effect is to cause BSDs not hang PCs at boot up, so my money's still on the disk.
 
paul_g said:
Bit of a wild card this but my desktop sometimes jams up on the welcome page as well. Apparently some pc's measure the static on the mother card and won't boot up if it is too high. I fix mine by unplugging the mains lead and holding the power switch in for 20 seconds.
As I said I'm not confident it'll help but its worth a try
Click to expand...

ive never actually heard of that one before.. :shrug:
 
Static thing is rubbish, your PC case is earthed.

Does sound like the HDD is on the way out. Considering how cheap HDDs are these days, at the first sign of trouble it's safest to just back it up and bin it, and get a replacement.

Plus if you're mildly paranoid like me on such matters, you get to take it apart and smash the platters :D
 
mid_gen said:
Static thing is rubbish, your PC case is earthed.

Does sound like the HDD is on the way out. Considering how cheap HDDs are these days, at the first sign of trouble it's safest to just back it up and bin it, and get a replacement.

Plus if you're mildly paranoid like me on such matters, you get to take it apart and smash the platters :D
Click to expand...


Well it may be rubbish but its worked a couple of times on my pc. Holding in the power button is obviously discharging a cap or something.
And its not something I dreamt up, the first time it happened it was the guy on the helpline who told me to do it
 
You need to approach this analytically

Plan A
Does the machine boot into safe mode every time? if so, If it fails to load into safe mode everytine, it is likley to be a hard drive problem or a motherboard problem

On the way into safe mode, If the machine hangs on .xxxx.....xxx.......MUP.SYS there is possibly a MOBO problem. Do the capacitores look swolen on the motherboard? The significance of it hanging there is that the MOBO basicaly tells the operating system what hardware is on the machine - to stop windows re-detecting it each time. windows writes a little list of data to the motherboard, and then reloads it on boot up. If the MOBO is playing up, then this could result in windows not loading

PlanB - check the hardware
We are assuming the memory and CPU are Ok as it is pasing POST

Unplug all the insides, except for the cpu, memory and hard drive - that is unplug the sound card, graphics card (assuming you have onboard graphics + a regular graphics card) the optical drives, the front USB board

In other words leave plugged in the CPU, PSU, Heatsink fan, the most basic graphics option and the memory

Test the machine, it should post and boot. If it doesnt, go get the hard drive checked, or swap in a old hard drive, and install windows on it - in this scenario, if it consistantly loads windows, your HDD is knackered

If your hard drive is knackered, dont use it, especially if you have important data on it

Does the machine boot into safe mode every time? If so, plug back in one piece of hardware at a time and figure out which one is preventing windows from loading

For reference the ATX discharge / static discharge thing works, because it temporarily removes all power from the board. Holding down the power buton forces the PSU to essentially disapate any any residual charge in its capacitors and if there is any static charge on the board, it removes it. The tollerances for voltages etc. is incredibly tight, this is why (on occasion) the discharge thing works
 
Richard King said:
For reference the ATX discharge / static discharge thing works, because it temporarily removes all power from the board. Holding down the power buton forces the PSU to essentially disapate any any residual charge in its capacitors and if there is any static charge on the board, it removes it. The tollerances for voltages etc. is incredibly tight, this is why (on occasion) the discharge thing works
Click to expand...

Thanks for that explanation Richard, nice to know i'm not dreaming things up ;)
 
Sorry I didn't return to thank you all!

Thanks :)

I had my system rebuilt.. now 60% faster and still waiting for win 7 64bit to arrive!
 
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