xp boot freeze?

[isildur]

I was reformatting one of my machines this weekend. (950Tbird, epox 8k7a board, 256 pc133 crucial, 2.1 gig samsung, 20 gig maxtor, 32mb radeon) I got win98se on there no problem. I installed XP Home w/ no problem, but when it goes to bootup it freezes on a black screen right after the WinXP bootscreen.

???

anyone know what might cause this? the install process went with zero issues...

 

[altonb1]

Is this a temporary freeze, in that after a long delay, XP continues to boot, or does it completely freeze & never recover? Regardless of the answer to the former, can you boot into safe mode without problems?

There is a program called Boot Log Analyzer that may help you determine what is happening. if you hit F8 at bootup and create a bootlog.txt file, you can use this program to analyze that data and help you determine the cause of the bottleneck/delay. I did a search on Google and came up with the link above, which indicates the file works on 98/NT/2000, so I'm sure it probably will work on XP. However, you will have to verify this on your own. You may also want to do a search and find out if this link gets you the latest version. It's freeware, so you don't have to worry about registration/licensing.

I HIGHLY recommend this file. In fact, this program might be worth adding to the Tech Support FAQ. I don't spend a lot of time on anandtech other than the forums, but maybe this file could be added to this site and linked directly. It's a small file about (230k) so it would not take up much space. Any MODS able to do this, or setup a mirror for the file on one of the free web page sites out there?

 

[isildur]

I let it sit for several minutes and nothing happened, so I am fairly certain that it wasn't going anywhere.

I'll fiddle around with removing non-essential hardware (although, that is a short list) and trying safe mode when I get home and see what happens. I'll grab this ap as well and see if that helps.

 

[altonb1]

Try booting in normal mode and let the machine run for several minutes. Check out the hard drive activity LED on the case (if you have it hooked up) to see if you are getting any disk activity. Just because you don't see anything onb the screen does not mean that the disk/processor are not swapping info and struggling through at a crawl. It probably is completely locking from your description, but I would give it a few minutes to verify.

My system, running 98se, freezes if I have my printer plugged into my USB port. This would probably occur with ANY USB device, but other than a Microsoft Optical Intellimouse that apparently went bad, I only have the printer. One of my 2 USB ports is missing the black plastic piece that stabilizes the cable in the port, so I'm guessing I trashed my USB port while moving my system one day, which also fried my mouse. If I plug the printer into the good port after booting, I can use the port fine. It's a hassle, but I can live with it until I get around to upgrading my system again. Try unplugging any USB devices and see if that fixes the problem. It might, but my problem is probably rare.

 

[DaiShan]

yeah definitely make sure no usb devices are plugged in until you are sure they all work correctly in xp. also make sure that pci slots 4 and 6 are open as they share irq's with usb devices on via chipsets.

 

[isildur]

nothing is attached at at all - only components are the vid card (radeon 32mb ddr), sound (sblive value), the 2 hd's (2 gig samsung, 20 gig maxtor) and the cdrom (52x maxwell).

I'll get rid of the live card tonight and see if that helps, but I've used that card in an xp machine before w/ no problems...

 

[isildur]

aha - it was the radeon card!

I was able to get into xp safe mode, where I updated to the latest ATI official xp drivers and it booted right up.

<shakes head>

weird.

Thanks for the help all!

 

[altonb1]

Good deal. I always heard good things about ATI cards, but I haven't been real happy with my Radeon VE 32MB card. I guess I'd be happier if I knew which drivers to use (the one from the CD it shipped with doesn't seem to b very good) and when i tried to use the latest official OR beta drivers, I was told the hardware didn't support the drivers. HUH?!?

I also hate that you have to completely remove the installed drivers, go to Standard VGA controller, then install the new drivers. That seems so stupid when most devices I've seen just require you to click upgrade driver from Device Manager, or simply run an install program.

Oh well...I'll stop complaining now...