Windows freezes on bootup

[MrBlahh]

A friend of mine just changed cases with his computer and nows its being stupid. It worked fine before and the changes from the old computer are new power supply, new heatsink/fan for the video card and I think he said he pulled the cpu off and reapplied thermal paste to it.

Heres what it does...After not being on for a while it will boot up fine. While in windows it seems to work fine. It was on for atleast 30 minutes without any problems. If you reboot it will freeze while loading windows when the status bar is half way...same thing every time. If you try to boot into safe mode it freezes just as the status bar is full...same thing every time. If you try to boot with the cd it goes through that long process as its loading drivers and just as its finishing it freezes.

Im not sure how long it has to sit for it to boot up. I tried it last night and it worked once and then he tried it sometime today and it worked once.

Has anyone seen anything like this? Its driving me nuts. It was working fine for months. I just dont get how it could be doing this at the exact same spot everytime and since it wont even boot into the cd my guess is that its hardware related. Could he have done something when he put a new fan/heatsink on the video card. The CPU isnt overheating according to the bios. Id appreciate any advice.

Heres the specs:
OS: Win2k Pro
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1700+
Mobo: Something Soyo but he doesnt remember.
Video card: xfx geforce5200
PSU: Antec 300 Watt

 

[mechBgon]

Since this conincides with a heatsink/fan replacement...

One trait of Soyo motherboards is that they've usually got "Fan-Off Control," which monitors the RPMs on the motherboard's CPUFAN1 header. You can override FOC on a one-time basis by holding down the Insert key before and during power-up, then go into the BIOS to the PC Health Status menu and disable F.O.C. permanently.

Another thought is that maybe he got his heatsink on backwards. Third & fourth photos on this page would be good to check, there are also additional tips for Thermalright clipdown heatsinks in particular there.

 

[MrBlahh]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Making sure the heatsink is installed properly is definetly one of the things Im going to check later on tonight. I dont think its a Fan problem because we're not getting the annoying FOC beep and die thing and all the fans are running.

One thing I did forget to mention is that it also takes a while to auto detect the drives and my friend said its never done that before. It sits for a good 15-30 seconds or so on the primary IDE.

Anyways, when I go over there in a bit Im going to one at a time pull out the video card and use onboard video to rule out the card, check the CPU heatsink is seating properly and then hook up the old PSU to the system to rule that out. Any more ideas of what to try if that fails?

 

[mechBgon]

One thing I did forget to mention is that it also takes a while to auto detect the drives and my friend said its never done that before. It sits for a good 15-30 seconds or so on the primary IDE.

The first thing I think of when I hear that, is maybe it's a Western Digital hard drive? If a WD hard drive is on its own data cable by itself, then jumper it for Single Drive rather than Master or Slave, they are picky like that. Single Drive is when you take the jumper cap right off the pins and leave it off, so it's easy to set.

The other brainstorm is maybe he plugged his PS/2 keyboard into the mouse port, or vice versa. Green port for mouse, purple port for keyboard, they're function-specific. Once in a while at work I move a computer and get the keyboard in the wrong hole, and the computer either freezes after POST or won't POST. So check that one out, easy to fix. PS/2 devices are not technically hot-plug, turn the computer off completely before moving the plug if that's what it is.

Good luck!

 

[MrBlahh]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

One thing I did forget to mention is that it also takes a while to auto detect the drives and my friend said its never done that before. It sits for a good 15-30 seconds or so on the primary IDE.

The first thing I think of when I hear that, is maybe it's a Western Digital hard drive? If a WD hard drive is on its own data cable by itself, then jumper it for Single Drive rather than Master or Slave, they are picky like that. Single Drive is when you take the jumper cap right off the pins and leave it off, so it's easy to set.

Yep, that was it. Just pulled off the jumper and it fired right up. I guess in the old case he had the Harddrive and cdrom on the same cable but they are on different cables in the new case for whatever reason.

I really appreciate the help.

 

[mechBgon]

Sure thing

 

[cheapherk]

I had the same problem a few months back- tested RAM, PSU, Video card, etc. I finally cured it with a new motherboard. Not a problem with any other component.