Computer post but does not boot into windows

[tabarnes19]

This is a strange problem that I have been having for about a month and I have exausted all options. When I cold boot my computer it will post, detect drives and then go to where the windows screen would usually come up and just stay on a black screen. The HD light remains lit. I usually have to turn on and off about 10 times or so before it will show the windows screen and begin to boot. After it is up and running everything works fine. Any suggestions it is killing me?

Windows XP SP2
Athlon xp 2200
512 MB RAM
4 HD's
3 Optical Drives
SB AUdigy
Geforce 4
GigaByte Nforce board

 

[bjpatrick]

That's weird. Do you have an extra hard drive to pop into your PC? Kind of sounds like there might be problems with the hard drive if this is a hardware issue.

When is the last time you ran an updated anti-virus program? Could be something on the MBR.

Have you tried to reinstall Windows?

 

[tabarnes19]

I have 4 hd's in the comp. Runs fine after it is up and running, can reboot and restart at that point. I have updated virus software running and actually did a fresh install of windows a week ago.

 

[folken]

Have you tried running prime95 or memtest to see if there are any hardware problems once you boot up? I had a simmilar problem with my dfi lanparty nf2 board when I put it to 200fsb. It would boot up after resetting it a few times and run good after it booted but it would not run prime95 for very long w/o an error and memtest was loaded with errors.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[nhatly2004]

try on other monitor to boot to windows. reload gfx driver. check back your monitor.

 

[Zoron]

How big of a power supply do you have? Four hard drives + 3 optical drives... then a GeForce 4 on top of that... I'm guessing if you have anything less than a 400W power supply, it's not going to handle it well.

Btw... why do you need 4 HDs and 3 optical drives anyway? I can understand you may be running a RAID array with the hard drives, but 3 opticals? That one has me puzzled. At the most... all you should need are 2 optical drives. (I have a DVD-CD/RW combo + a DVD RW).

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[juice]

I had the same problem when iwas troubleshoot bad ram. If you have a bad stick of ram in your computer it will post but will not load windows. My two cents = Start with ram first.

<font color=blue> I know nothing that is why i am here at THG!</font color=blue>