Good morning,
My computer's hardware/software synthesis is as follows:
SOFTWARE:
WinXP SP2 and the latest drivers for the motherboard and graphics card.
HARDWARE:
Mainboard by Gigabyte (model GA-8SQ800) (has integrated audio)
P4 at 2.68GHz (FSB at 150MHz)
1GB (2x512MB) of DDR RAM at 250MHz (dual-channel)
Sapphire Radeon 9700, 128MB (the AGP, non-pro version)
HDD by WD, 7200 rpm, 8mb cache, 80 or 40 GBs (can't remember)
Dual-monitor system with the aid of Ultramon (to extend the desktop's taskbar to all windows) and ATI's Hydravision (to move windows back and forth the two monitors, maximise, minimise, etc.).
THE PROBLEM:
The system worked fine until Ultramon's trial mode expired. I started experiencing sporadic reboots and after about 2-3 weeks I decided I had enough and unistalled Ultramon. However, immediately after I had unistalled Ultramon, WinXP just wouldn't start up. It would go as far as the logo screen (i.e. black screen with the windows logo in the middle and s moving blue bar at the bottom) and as it was about to load the blue screen with all the user accounts, it would simply restart. I don't know whether Ultramon's unistallation has anything to do with this problem, I am simply mentioning it because the two coincided.
I disabled "automatic restart upon failure" after going into a certain menu with F8 and where the system failed and restarted, it simply produced a blue screen with an error message (i.e. STOP 0x00000024).
SOLUTIONS:
I tried starting up the system with only the absolutely necessary sub-systems active. To be more specific, I only left 1 memory module, the AGP graphics card and the HDD but the problem persisted. Loading the recovery console via the WinXP CD was equally fruitless and produced the EXACT same error (i.e. STOP 0x00000024).
I disconnected the old HDD and connected a new one (pre-configured with WinXP and all the necessary drivers/software for the system) and the system started up as normal.
However, when I connected the old HDD (to use as slave) I got the same problem (apart from the hexadecimal parameters following the error message on the blue screen that were slightly changed).
I have found a possible solution at <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q228888">microsoft</a> and will give it a go, but first, I wanted to ask whether there is an easier solution.
Thanks
