Major System Issue

[unevendozen]

Hey everyone,

my wife's computer has gone lost its mind tonight. It was working fine this morning, but all of a sudden it is unable to boot. When we press the power button the normal Dell, then Windows XP splash screens pop up, but after the initial Windows screen (black background, blue status bar) the screen goes black and NOTHING happens.

I am able to boot in safemode so I am pretty sure its not a harddrive failure. I'm guessing its not a video card issue since I can see everything fine when in Safemode.

I'm pretty technically savvy but this has me completely at a loss. I have NO idea what could be going on here.

Help?

 

[Markbnj]

I'm guessing some device is causing a problem with its driver, and that is supported by the fact that you can boot in safe mode. Use msconfig to selectively enable devices, rebooting each time until you find the one that fails.

 

[bruceb]

Try F8 on boot up and select Last Known Good Configuation
If that will not work, then Boot into Safe Mode again and
run System Restore to 1 day or so before the problems occurred.
You will not lose any data with either method.

 

[BadRobot]

Oddly enough i have had this happen to me when a hard drive was failing, 2 days after this exact same situation my hard drive was clicking and woudl not boot up at all. Heh, so if you need info off of it u might want to try to grab it in safe mode just in case...

EDIT: but before you start buying replacement parts boot into safe mode and do the other suggestions first, also maybe try to update some drivers first as well

 

[BadRobot]

Also the kind person above me suggested to use your last known good configuration and thsi may work. However, when my hard drive was failing i could infact boot completely when i used the "last known godo config" option but when i booted it again after i ran a system restore it still was doing it and then my hard drive crashed