Weird cold boot lockups

Gaidal

Member
Jul 9, 2000
86
0
0
Greetings!

I've been having a somewhat strange problem (to me) that has occurred recently.

The problem seems to only occur from a cold boot. When I start the computer, it will boot straight to windows like normal, but then lock up within 30 seconds. After this when I reboot, I'll get a loud beep from the computer and it fails to boot even to the memory check. Occaisionally, it will boot to windows again, only to lock up and repeat the process. Eventually, I make it into windows, and there are no problems as long as I do not turn off the computer. There also seems to be funny behavior with the cursor (weird visual defects around the cursor).

Again, as long as the computer is on and running, there are no problems with its operation.

I thought virus at first and did noticed that my Norton had gotten quite screwed up (would cut off mid-scan, virus def files seemed weird). So I installed AntiVir and found a trojan, but upon looking it up, was only releated to spyware kinds of things. There was no difference in the operation of the computer after removal of the trojan. Repeat scans have revealed nothing.

I'm sort of leaning towards hardware problems at the moment. I have a fairly new hard drive (the nice 120 GB Diamondmax Maxtor drive with the warranty) that was purchased about 6 months ago. The other thing I thought of was possibly the PSU, since it's only 300W and about 5 years old at this point.

Here are the rest of the specs I have.

AMD Athlon 2400+
Geforce2 TI 4600
nForce2 MB
512 MB DDR (Crucial I think)
120GB 7200 rpm Maxtor Diamondmax (with the larger cache and the warranty)
300W PSU

Thanks for all of your input on this issue.
 

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
12,099
47
91
First thing to do it reseat EVERYTHING inside the PC. The repeated on/off cycle tends to loosen things up a bit.
 

KB

Diamond Member
Nov 8, 1999
5,404
386
126
Make sure every connector is in tight as BadThad said, particularly the power cords. Then try replacing the PSU if you still have problems.
 

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
12,099
47
91
Originally posted by: KB
Make sure every connector is in tight as BadThad said, particularly the power cords. Then try replacing the PSU if you still have problems.

Don't just make sure it's tight, actually remove and reseat all the cables, ram modules and cards in the system.