PC with occasional boot issues

[ell]

Hi, I have a customer with a clean, pentium 4 machine that likes to act up about once a month. The machine is shut down at night,( I disabled power management). It still sometimes will not boot normally. Gets hung up on windows splash screen. I've always been able to get it going by safe mode, last known good, etc. but I need to get to the bottom of this. I have checked device manager, ran chkdsk, reinstalled xp from system recovery, no viruses, installed all windows updates only devices connected are a printer, mouse and speakers. Seems to run perfectly, i have checked the number of processes running too. Could bad memory be doing it? Hard drive? those are the only two tests i haven't run yet i think. ideas??:confused:

[Romaniac]

Any dump files, error files etc generated? You should check anyway.

Yeah try running memtest.

Check BIOS to see that all components have whatever settings they should have i.e. memory timings and voltage is a big one since MOBOs set that stuff up automatically, and may be wrong.

Can you get it to boot up without going into safe mode, or selecting last configuration? As in, if you just restart via power button, does it work?

[ell]

Any dump files, error files etc generated? You should check anyway.

Yeah try running memtest.

Check BIOS to see that all components have whatever settings they should have i.e. memory timings and voltage is a big one since MOBOs set that stuff up automatically, and may be wrong.

Can you get it to boot up without going into safe mode, or selecting last configuration? As in, if you just restart via power button, does it work?

I'm never there when it happens (ofcourse) but usually when I get a call, I have to f8 then do last known good. I'm no expert with bios stuff, I'm sure its never been messed with, I could try resetting it to default values. Is there an easy way to test the power supply? Some good freeware program? I have ubcd4win, bartpe. I'm going to run memtest for sure. I don't get it, this thing isn't used much.

[ell]

Any dump files, error files etc generated? You should check anyway.

Yeah try running memtest.

Check BIOS to see that all components have whatever settings they should have i.e. memory timings and voltage is a big one since MOBOs set that stuff up automatically, and may be wrong.

Can you get it to boot up without going into safe mode, or selecting last configuration? As in, if you just restart via power button, does it work?

They restart it very day, so most of the time it boots fine.

[Pc Fixed Right]

check the ram and check the hard drive for bad sectors. If its bsoding than run the utility on the front page of this site. http://www.technibble.com/repair-tool-of-the-week-whocrashed/#more-1758 to see whats causing the problem.

[ell]

check the ram and check the hard drive for bad sectors. If its bsoding than run the utility on the front page of this site. http://www.technibble.com/repair-tool-of-the-week-whocrashed/#more-1758 to see whats causing the problem.

ah, that looks great, thanks! I'll give it a try. Have a merry-merry

[Blues]

Test RAM and the HDD, Hard Disk Drive, also do a Check/Scan Disk and Defrag on the HDD it could be as simple as a horribly fragmented drive. You can also try tools that check the windows install and repair it like an old ERD2005 Boot CD I think UBCD4Win does that too.

[doortodoorgeek]

I say spinrite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) the disk

[ell]

Test RAM and the HDD, Hard Disk Drive, also do a Check/Scan Disk and Defrag on the HDD it could be as simple as a horribly fragmented drive. You can also try tools that check the windows install and repair it like an old ERD2005 Boot CD I think UBCD4Win does that too.

yes I already did chkdisk, it found errors, but appeared to have fixed them. I did defrag, ccleaner. It runs like a top when i'm there!!!!:mad:

[arrow_runner]

Talk them into just using hibernate?

[Pc Fixed Right]

hibernate mode sucks on some machines because the computer doesnt like to wake up out of it sometimes.