Windows start up problem...

[jei3]

Last night my computer was running fine. I played some oblivion then turned off the comp. I woke up this morning and turned the computer back on. The initial post and startup are completely normal. Then it goes to the windows loading screen. After windows loads, my computer just goes to a completely black screen and doesn't respond to anything. The computer runs fine in safe mode, but i haven't been able to identify the actual problem. I've reseated the vid card and poked around in safe mode trying to find the problem, but had no luck. Please let me know if anyone has had a similar problem or might know how to fix it. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Im running

amd athlon 64 3000+
1gb ram
sapphire radeon x800gto
80gb hdd
abit nf8 mobo
windows xp home sp2.

 

[chuckanutrunr]

Final Update: Old ATI drivers did not fix the problem. Picked up a new graphics card and it works great! The Sapphire card is going back.


Update: After doing a much slower and thorough clean installation, I've narrowed it down to the Sapphire x800GTO + ATI driver combo.

I installed each hardware driver one at a time and did 3 restarts in between each, and did the same procedure for each of the Windows updates, bringing me up to SP2. I held off on installing the ATI drivers until I had SP2 up and running. Absolutely ZERO hangs up until the ATI drivers went on. After that, the hangs came back. The drivers were the latest from ATI's website. I'll try removing those and using what came with the card. If that doesn't work, I'll be sending the card back. I'll let you know whether I find drivers that work.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm building a new system myself and I've been seeing the same black screen after the Windows logo. What's strange is that it will happen randomly on start-up, so it's not happening everytime. When I have to do a hard power-down after a freeze, I get the options for safe mode, last good, and normal start-up. My luck hasn't been perfect with either last known or normal start-up. The fact that it seems to be almost 50/50 when I start-up has me puzzled. My top picks for problem spots are:

1. Video card (Sapphire x800GTO just like yours), the card also 'talks' loud enough to hear it over my system fans while scrolling panes the internet.
2. PSU - Voltage drops to low 11V range on 12V rail when in BIOS screen
3. Conflict with USB devices?

Everything runs perfect once I make it into Windows (with the exception of the noisy video card). No problems/uninstalled devices in the system hardware manager either.

The problem first started after getting deeper into the Windows updates... maybe around the time when SP2 was put on and ATI video drivers downloaded from Microsoft. Booted perfectly every time before that.

I'm going to try a fresh install using drivers directly from ATI to start with and see whether that helps.

What are the details on your hardware as far as manufacturers and such?



Does anyone else out there have a clue what can make a computer go to a black screen between the Windows Start-up logo and the desktop while starting up?


Here's my setup:


ASUS A8N-E (rev2)
Athlon 64 3200+
2x 512MB Crucial memory (I don't have the exact model with me at the moment)
Sapphire x800GTO
2x Western Digital SATAII 80GB
NEC DVD burner
Antec TX series tower w/ 400W PSU