Ok so here's the deal. I went to use my computer today and noticed that there was no sound. I checked all of the physical connections which seem fine and then rebooted. After rebooting the sound came back for a while but then gradually increased in static before failing again completely. I reinstalled the AC 97 drivers (It's an onboard soundcard for the Asus A8N-SLI MoBo) to no avail. I also had the entire computer lock up twice and reboot itself while trying to fix the sound. A few reboots later the operating system would run normally for about 2 seconds before completely locking for 2 and repeating this pattern. Task manager showed me that the CPU was alternating between ~ 5% usage to 100% when it would lock and back and forth in the 2 second pattern. I completely shut down the computer and when I attempted to boot back into windows, my computer now freezes on the Windows loading screen. The bar will move across roughly 10 or so times before freezing completely! If I try a reset, it will not even detect the drive that windows is installed on! It will only reappear if I power the machine off and back on again! I am able to boot into Windows in safe mode, and I tried using System Restore and msconfig to turn off all of the startup services and programs but I am still unable to do a normal boot into windows. I also tried doing a repair install of XP and the repair installation will get to the installing drivers step of the installation before abrubtly rebooting and attempting to continue the setup in an endless loop. I am currently running chkdsk /R in the Windows Recovery Console but I'm somewhat doubting this will fix the problem. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Check your CPU temperature in BIOS. If you're seeing readings close to 60*C, you might want to double check the CPU cooling. Would you list your specs too? Including the power supply brand and wattage? We might be able narrow this down if we know more about the machine as a whole.
Hey guys, since I was last on, I went ahead and formatted my primary drive, and reinstalled Windows XP this morning. It booted up okay until I ran my first round of windows update. Then the problem of freezing on the loading screen occurred again with the drive not even being recognized after doing a reset. I just replaced the SATA cable to the HDD with a new one and I also switched the input on the motherboard from the SATA 1 slot to SATA 2, and I was able to boot back in with no problems, I am currently reinstalling my drivers but for the time being it seems to be okay... My CPU is running at ~ 37°C so I don't think the problem is coming from there... Here are my Specs: CPU: AMD Athlon 64 Bit 3200+ Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Memory: 2x512Mb Kingston PC3200 Power Supply: Antec 450W Hard Drives: - Seagate 7200 RPM 250GB SATA - Maxtor 7200 RPM 80 GB IDE - Samsung 7200 RPM 80GB IDE Video Card: Nvidia Geforce 7800GT 256MB OS: Windows XP Professional (On my way back to SP2) I'm downloading the service pack at the moment so once I have it and install and hopefully boot again I'll update my situation!
The plot thickens.... Before I could download SP2, Windows Update wanted to update itself to the newer version. I think it was Windows Installer 3.1. However after downloading and installing that and rebooting, now it freezes on the loading screen again! I can power the machine off and boot into windows under the Most Recent Settings That Worked option, but now windows update doesn't work at all! Does anyone have any ideas as to what is going on!?
have you tried checking your ram for errors? a good utitlity for this is Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool
Thanks for all the help guys. I think my BIOS was somehow screwed up as I just flashed it with the latest version for my MoBo and it booted up no problem and VERY quickly! Thanks again!
