Big fiery ball visible from outer space. I need some good advice.

[cyperangel]

Okide Dokie *takes a deep breath* Right!.....

Wwell, after formatting both my harddrives, and reinstalling windows, office 2003, and the sims + university, my computer is back to usual business.

Usual business in my case means, that it wont start up, except in safe mode, with networking. I just formattet and reinstalled the whole frigging thing, and it does this thing again. If i shut down the computer, I might be lucky to be able to start it up as I should be, one in 30 times, and thats winning a firstprize in the lotto lucky!!!

So, any of you geniusses out there have some prize information that could potentially salvage my computer? This round of I-Wont_boot started after the sims crashed on me, and i had to turn off the computer on the power button to get some life back in it.

What happens when I boot it up, is that it boots up as far as the blue thingy that goes across the screen on the win XP logo page. It never gets as far as the login screen. It then just hangs there, while the blue bar going and going and going like some other frigging energizer bunny.

I formatted the computer, because I had the exact same problem before, which is why i took to never shutting down the durn thing. I sadly dont recall why it started the last time, but with time, its gone worse. I think it might either be a faulty harddrive, or my gfx card thats doing funny stuff, but I dont know how to test it. I can run tests in safe mode, but I cant get it to boot in regular mode.

Links, ideas, flames, anything is welcome at this point, which is like 1 milimetre before I give up, and toss the whole frigging computer out of the window on the 8th floor of this building. That would be called "crash Testing!"

[gali]

"Links, ideas, flames, anything is welcome at this point, which is like 1 milimetre before I give up, and toss the whole frigging computer out of the window on the 8th floor of this building. That would be called "crash Testing!" (cyber).

Wow! Instead of throwing the computer out of the window - I would call a technician, who I am sure will give you a good advice, or fix the problem you have.
I don't think it's related to the game.

Some time ago (1-2 months), my game began to freeze for a second or so, without crash. I didn't like it at all and called a technician; he updated my drivers, gave me 800 MHz processor and 2 Mega RAM - and the game runned smoothly, without the freezing I had.

Now it runs slower, because I downloaded "tons" of clothes, objects and hair from TSR. I called the technician again, and he said that the downloads are the cause of the slow run. No need of update.

[cyperangel]

Well, I have enough computer knowledge, to make sure I am using the updated drivers, and the computer i bought runs on a 3000 AMD processor, with 1 gig of ram, and a ATI 9600 pro gfx card. So i very much doubt its because it lacks system resources. My guess is that it is either a driver failiure some where, which I dont know how to track down, or a hardware failiure, which i dont know how to test for.

I knew i should have posted this in the retardo land, that is how i feel right now. Anyways, Ive scoured the net for possible sollutions for the hang on boot problem, and have found like 17 different sollutions, which wont work for me. Including disabling mup.sys, reinstalling, and disabling the build in sound card.

Now, as for calling a technician. I work on an internet hotline, where I get calls from such technicians. They cost almost as much as a new computer, and they know absolutely squad, so that is not an option im feeling very comfortable with.

I dont think its related to the game either. But at the moment I am desperate enough to ask the people i trust in most when it comes to computers, and that is my husband, and the gang that roams these forums. So, rip of my lips, or whatever.

Thanks for the try though

[dizzy]

Wow, that sucks. Sounds like your hard drive is FUBAR. Try replacing it.

[gillies]

First thing to do would be to get some diagnostic program for the hard drive and see what it says.

[SickPuppy]

Could be your graphics card as you said...I had the same experience. Try booting in safe mode and then disabling your display adapter in the device manager. If you can boot normally after this, the problem is with your card. I would try reseating the card and check the connections on your hard drive and plugin connections on the motherboard. If that doesn't resolve it, try a new graphics card.

[ZephyrZodiac]

The graphics card would affect the running of the game itself, but I can't see how that would affect boot-up!  I would say it's either your power unit or your hard disk, in which case, if you can get it to boot up just once, make sure you've saved everything you need onto CD/DVD before you replace it!  Since you obviously know more about the inner workings than me, I make this suggestion very tentatively but when my previous installation refused to boot up and kept crashing, it was the power unit which was just not up to the job.

[garyalex]

This sounds like a driver issue. Best thing is to try booting with a minimal configuration (Motherboard, Memory, Processor and single Hard drive. You might need to use the Gfx card if you don't have an onboard graphics controller on your system.

If this fails to boot, its an issue with one of those 4 or 5 components.
If it does boot, its something else you have connected (printer, scanner, dvd-writer, Lan card etc). Put them back one at a time until problem re-occurs.

Software Testing:
Go into safe mode, Go into Device Manager, that can be accessed via Control Panel, System. Start disabling unnecessary stuff here. See if Windows will boot normally.

Hardware Testing:
Memory can be tested with a utility from www.memtest.org
The rest would need to be removed and tested individually.
Try going into the BIOS settings and disabled unnecessary items (such as sound card, onboard LAN, com ports, USB ports and so on)

[SickPuppy]

The graphics card would affect the running of the game itself, but I can't see how that would affect boot-up!

Because windows doesn't run off legacy drivers if graphic card drivers are installed.

[Brynne]

If i shut down the computer, I might be lucky to be able to start it up as I should be, one in 30 times, and thats winning a firstprize in the lotto lucky!!!

Wow! One in 30? What Lotto do you play, and where can I get a ticket? Kidding.
I had a similar problem with my laptop. Turned out it was a bad motherboard. But I'm no computer genius, and it sounds like you've gotten some pretty solid advice on this thread.
Hope you get it resolved soon!

[Jorenne]

I actually had this exact same issue on my old PC, even down to completely reinstalling windows, which didn't solve the problem, just as your case.

I found it to be a graphics driver issue, as something in the new drivers was incomaptable with something else in my system and I had to roll back three or four driver versions to finally get the PC to boot up as it should.  To be honest, I didn't find the solution on my own, but I have a friend who works tech support for a large company.  I know it doesn't seem logical, but what have you got to lose by trying?

[Renatus]

Just for the record, graphics cards can and will affect bootup - faulty graphics cards can prevent a computer from making it past POST (the part right at the start where it beeps) at all.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sorry, I was assuming the graphics card itself was not the problem, ie that it was not faulty!  But surely you can check that out with dxdiag (on the 1 in 30 occasions you can actually get past bootup)?

[Renatus]

I'm concurring with the others saying it could be a graphics driver problem (which can cause Windows to fail to boot up normally at all), or some other hardware problem. But honestly, if you can find a computer repair technician to physically look at your computer, that is your best bet. Trying to diagnose through text or verbal descriptions is terribly limited; a repair tech has access to all sorts of stuff, including extra computers to test suspicious parts in and known good parts to test in suspicious computers, that most regular people don't. If you can get recommendations for a good place, that's best. Try to avoid recommendations to take your computer to someone's buddy unless you really trust the person being recommended.

I always felt uncomfortable trying to diagnose someone's computer over the phone when I was working as a repair tech, because it's hard to tell exactly what is wrong with it without being able to see and hear the thing and perform physical tests. When I actually had the computer in my hands to poke at, though, I could figure out most problems damned fast.