strange xp behavior

Holeypockets

I've not come across this before...

I have just reformatted a laptop and clean install of xp sp2. when it starts up it idles on the little white bars you get before the splash screen.

Does anyone have any knowledge of what might cause this.

The disc health appears OK and because it's a fresh install after reformatting there is not the 'bogged down with files' problem that usually exists with many pc's.

thanks in advance

amosworks

Try pressing F8 during startup and boot in to logging mode, see where it dies for some clues.

Running Knoppix (https://www.knopper.de) can also help you determine problems on the PC, hardware based primarily but you can use to extract log files from your NTFS partitions etc. for extra assistance

Good luck!

MercilessKiller

Sounds like a corrupt boot sector.

You can use automatic recovery console to fix that with the commands

FIXBOOT
FIXMBR

Just go into recovery mode from bootup on the windows xp installation disk

If that doesnt work could be hardware error such as RAM probs etc...

Chippy_Minton

Probably just Windows tuning the boot process. Watch the next few reboots over the next 2-3 days to see if it improves.

Holeypockets

Thanks chaps, it looks like on this occasion it was down to not having the latest bios loaded. I flashed the bios and hey presto a nice fast laptop again.