Win2k freezes during normal startup

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

Recently one of my PC's at home is having trouble booting up. It has Win2k SP4 installed. What's happening is that the system just freezes when the Win2k bootup screen appears (the flowing blue graphics at the bottom stops flowing and the progress indicator is stuck at around 50%), with the Hard Disk indicator light just staying on, but there's apparently no hard disk activity (the HD is a rather noisy one so if there's read/write activity I can clearly hear it). For now it can only startup in Safe Mode.

 

However I found something even more weird when I tried some troubleshooting. I tried booting on the Win2k installation disc to attempt an Install-Repair, but when it reaches the point where the message at the bottom of the screen is "Setup is starting Windows 2000" (after showing all other one-line text most of which begin with the word "Loading"), it also freezes, and again, with the hard disk light steadily on but no hard disk activity. Normally at this point it should reach the Setup menu where it says "Welcome to Windows 2000 setup..." etc and displays options on how to proceed (Normal Install, Install-Repair, or Exit Setup), but in this case it doesn't happen. Just to be sure that this was not a problem with the Win2k CD I tried booting it on another PC (though this 2nd one, which I'm on right now, has WinXP installed). This time it booted as expected and reached the Setup menu.

 

I'm suspicious that there's something in that PC itself (hardware wise) that is making Win2k refuse to start up, both the installed OS and the Win2k installation CD. Has anyone else experienced this? Are there logs I can check or anything I can look at (at least in Safe Mode)?

 

 

System Specs:

 

Intel PentiumIII 1GHz

ECS PIII/PGA370 Motherboard with VIA chipset

Leadtek GeForce3 Ti200 Video Card

256MB SDRAM

Maxtor 10GB Hard Disk

Western Digital 6GB Hard Disk

Creative 8x DVD-ROM Drive

CNet Pro120c 10/100Mbps LAN card

Creative Labs Soundblaster Live Value

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

I guess judging from the lack of response, either this problem of mine is totally unique, or no one simply has a solution to it.

 

Anyway my dad took the PC to a repair shop, and the technician suspects that the Western Digital hard drive is causing problems.

[Pupazz 0]

sounds like a dying HDD to me

[Vulcan 0]

if i were you... i would use a dos start up disk and run a HDD scan with norton disk doctor or microfoft scan disk...with surface scan enabled !!

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

Well like I suspected it was hardware problem. The technician I mentioned removed the Western Digital hard drive, and the problem disappeared.

[Down8 0]

I am having the same problem!

 

Minor differences: my startup screen gets to 100% before it locks; and I can still boot from CD just fine. I've tried the repair process, but nothing has helped. This is a brand new 120GB Maxtor, so it just can't be dying (!).

 

I suspect it has something to do with me playing around with DEFRAG. I was defragging my drives and noticed my compact flash reader showed up and I tried to defrag it (yes, I touched the stove to be sure it was hot, when I was a child). It could not get sole access to the drive, so it asked if I wanted to run at startup. Without thinking I clicked [yes], and haven't been able to get back into windows w/o Safe Mode.

 

I've tried all the common FIXBOOT and FDISK /MBR, but they don't help.

 

How can I stop Windows from trying to find that drive when booting? (The drive obviously isn't seen until Windows can load the drivers.)

 

-bZj

[masterphilch 0]

I had the same problem with starting windows. Once I wanted to do another effort, nothing happended, there was no power available. So I tried differnet things and it finally worked again, but the w2k-problem still existed. Once again, I gave up and as I spent my last hope, it started, but there comes nothing, no beep and no signal on the screen. I already replaced the graphic-card and the ram. If it really was the harddisk (same behaviour as described from Phalanx-Imawano) why the hell is there nothing on the screen?? Could it be, that the mainboard is failure or just that the graphic-card interface is corrupted?

thx