Freezing on entry to XP

[madh83]

My pc's been working fine for a while, recently it started freezing on the first bootup. As in after it's been off all night and turning it on in the mornings. I can get into windows and login, but it'll freeze up right after that and stop accessing the harddrive suddenly. A restart will clear the problem up, but I'm worried it's an indication of something. Any ideas?

Update: I got an error loading OS message today, restarted and it worked. I think it's my harddrive dying. I ran a scan for bad sectors however it came up with nothing. Should I try scanning with something besides chkdsk?

Edit:
p4 530
p5vd2mx se
2 gb kingston ddr2 667 ram
geforce 6800
winxp home

 

[montag451]

Hi,

Does it also freeze when you try to get into Safe Mode?
I presume you have also tried 'last known good configuration' as well.

Do you remember doing anything, ANYTHING, that may have triggered it? ie, installing software, drivers, (especially antivirus/firewall) etc?

 

[cprince]

I would go to My Computer (either in Safe Mode or Normal) -> right click on C: -> choose "Properties" -> click on the Tools tab -> click "check now" button -> check "Automatically fix file system errors" -> click "Start" -> you have to reboot your computer in order to run the scan.

 

[madh83]

The only thing I did was install 3dmark06, I also did open up the case for a few minutes to clear out some dust yesterday. Well, the system works when I restart so I haven't used system restore yet.

I'll try the fix file system errors.

 

[madh83]

It just occurred to me that I might've loosened some wires while I was inside my case, re-tightened everything just to make sure. I guess I'll wait and see if that was it.

 

[taltamir]

its called auto update. it installs windows patches over night... a few monthes ago ms released a patch that broke all 5 vista machines I am taking care of. I had to reformat all of them (repatching does not exhibit that problem.. so they probably fixed the offending issue, or it was due to an incompatibility with a now obsolete patch that is no longer installed on a clean format).

Reformat your PC

 

[madh83]

I disabled auto-update a long time ago. I'm also not on vista.