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Windows Freezes at Loading Screen?


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#1
Pathen

Pathen

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I am a college student in a digital graphics major, and I depend on my PC running for my grades. For the last several weeks it has been degrading, however.

It all started when I noticed that at extended loading screens for games (Newer games, such as BF2142) the loading screen would "hang" with repeating sound. Rebooting the computer fixed this issue up to a point- however, after a particularly bad series of crashes while loading, the computer wouldn't boot at all.

First, Windows would only get to the loading screen and eventually "hang" (freeze) there. (The blue bar would stop moving.)

After awhile I just determined that the Harddrive was corrupt and replaced it. After replacing the harddrive the computer worked fine booting up exactly twice. The next day when I went to start the computer, it Froze at the loading screen again.

For awhile, I thought I could sidestep this by entering the bios, or continuously rebooting in an attempt to make it work. (A friend of mine told me that it could be a BIOS issue, but the CMOS is still fine.)

I thought, at the time, that my power supply was failing, so I replaced it. Again the computer started fine exactly once, then froze on startup again. However, now I could boot it by some mysterious combination of either leaving the power supply off for awhile before booting, and entering/exiting the BIOS after booting. Usually it took 3 tries and 30 minutes to boot the computer.

Once in windows everything functioned fine with no noticable drop in performance.

Now, I've gone away for a week, leaving the entire system off, and when I return I can't get the computer to get past the loading screen regardless.

Either the computer will freeze after about 5 minutes of "Loading Windows", or it will Load Windows for awhile, then the screen will go black. Does anyone have any idea what could be the problem? This all spontaniously started after a crash, and the same problem has persisted through 2 different harddrives, Power supplies, and a fresh installation of windows.

Specs:
ABIT An8 SLI Motherboard
AMD 64b 4000+
Corsair XMS DDR 2 gig Ram
Seagate Barracuda 250 gig SATA drive
BFG GeForce 7800 GTX 256Ram
Audigy 2 ZS
Rosewill 600w modular power supply. (Upgraded from a 550 Antec after problems started)
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#2
bmwboy

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First let me start off by saying that you should keep the antec in, I've seen rosewill Powersupplies before, and, they have a cheapo tendency to blow.

Let's try booting into safe mode:
To get into the Windows 2000 / XP Safe mode, as the computer is booting press and hold your "F8 Key" which should bring up the "Windows Advanced Options Menu" as shown below. Use your arrow keys to move to "Safe Mode" and press your Enter key.

Does that work?
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#3
Pathen

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On about the 7th try of rebooting the computer, it worked.

I left the computer off for 5-10 minutes (With the power supply off.)
Turned the power supply on, turned the computer on.
Entered Bios. Loaded optimized defaults, saved changes.
Computer reboots, hit tab to display post, gets past post screen.
Windows begins to load, tells me it failed last time- I tell it to start normally.
It boots normally, asks me if I want to run a chkdisk (Like it always does when I shut it off after the harddrive stops spinning.)
I tell it not to. (I've let it run before, it finds no problems.)
Immediately afterwards it boots windows fine, and the computer is now up.

Still.. this is harrowing going through this trial/error to make the computer boot each time. Any ideas?
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#4
bmwboy

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Do you feel ok with opening the case? If so:
How many pieces of RAM in the motherboard?
Did you do a fresh install of windows on the new hard disk?
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#5
Pathen

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I built the computer myself from Newegg parts about a year and a half ago, so yeah. At this point I am intimately familiar with the hardware. (More than I'd care to be.)

The RAM is two 1 gig slots. Corsair XMS with heat spreaders.

Also, yes. I did a completely fresh installation of windows on the new harddrive. I think that it is something hardware related that may hve been breaking/broken inside the system. The question is that if it's not the harddrive or the power supply, what's the next most likely thing to have broken?

I know that the CMOS battery isn't dead because I kept the computer /power supply off for a week, and the windows clock is still keeping time.

Edited by Pathen, 25 November 2006 - 05:18 PM.

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#6
bmwboy

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I built the computer myself from Newegg parts about a year and a half ago, so yeah. At this point I am intimately familiar with the hardware. (More than I'd care to be.)

The RAM is two 1 gig slots. Corsair XMS with heat spreaders.

Also, yes. I did a completely fresh installation of windows on the new harddrive. I think that it is something hardware related that may hve been breaking/broken inside the system. The question is that if it's not the harddrive or the power supply, what's the next most likely thing to have broken?

I know that the CMOS battery isn't dead because I kept the computer /power supply off for a week, and the windows clock is still keeping time.



Take one piece of RAM out, and then try booting, then, if that still doesn't work, put the other piece of RAM back in, and take the unremoved one out....if that doesn't work then I'm leaning towards a MotherBoard problem.
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#7
Pathen

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Hm. Thanks, I'll give it a try with the RAM.

Though I don't think anything could really be wrong with the RAM because it's still registering 2 gigabytes, and I make good use of the memory when rendering in Maya or playing a 3D-heavy game such as Battlefield 2142.

Just the same, I'll let you know if it works out when I try the RAM switch.
Thanks =)
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#8
Pathen

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Today my computer restarted due to a windows update and when it was shut down I tried removing the ram as suggested-- No change.

The ability to boot the computer is directly tied to how long I leave it off with the pwoer supply off (for it to gain an additional charge) and then booting the computer as quickly as possible.

Some component in the machine is sapping more power than it should from the PSU and draining power that is needed when starting the computer, but I have no idea what.
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