XP bootup freezing at Windows logo

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Hi everyone. My XP box almost never boots up correctly anymore. Most of the time it will boot to either the Windows XP logo screen (with the animated status bar scrolling from left to right) or it will shoot up a string of text as it begins to boot and stall there. Either way it just sits and sits and I need to reset and try again. The hard drive is mostly silent during this time. It will usually boot up after I hit reset at least 4-5 more times, though it’s incredibly inconsistent. When it finally does boot up, everything is fine. Nothing seems wrong. I’ve done various scans and updates and things seem to check out. I noticed a previous thread that mentioned a possibly flawed video card, but I’m not sure that fits my problem because I can see the logo on my screen. I’m really trying to figure out what’s wrong as I’ve used this machine for video editing for a few years and would love to keep it going–it’s otherwise been rock solid. Any ideas? Thanks for the help.

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Hi cancon,

Welcome to the Lounge.

Does it boot normally in safe mode? How long as this been happening? Anything changed between the last time it booted normally and the time it started showing these issues?

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Not always, no. It’s inconsistent. I just tried it a minute ago (I’m typing from my Win7 laptop) and after hitting reset XP presented me with the option to boot in using safe mode. So I chose it, as I almost always do, and this time it booted. I let it finish booting, then did a restart from within XP and it booted properly. So this time it worked and I’m browsing and running programs as usual. However, there are plenty of times where I try to go in with safe mode and it fails to boot and I need to hit reset, or it does actually boot into safe mode but when I do a restart it fails after restarting and I’m back to where I started.

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Hi cancon,

Welcome to the Lounge?

Does it boot normally in safe mode? How long as this been happening? Anything changed between the last time it booted normally and the time it started showing these issues?

Hi, thanks for the welcome. This problem has been going on for months. I can’t quite remember when it started, but I know nothing significant had changed with my machine, nothing memorable. Just seemed to start doing it one day. At first–if I remember correctly–it seemed to happen less frequently. Like every 5 or 10 boot ups it would stall. I remember backing everything up at that point just in case because it was making me nervous. Then the boot ups started stalling almost every time. But oddly, once I get in, the machine seems to run perfectly–I have internet, programs launch, antivirus finds nothing, etc. But still, something isn’t right and I’d love to fix it. Thanks for your help.

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Things to try:
1. Run chkdsk /f from a command prompt. Accept invitation to run at next boot.
2. Download and run Malwarebytes .
3. Try the clean boot diagnostic procedure.
4. Try a repair install.

Jerry

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Things to try:
1. Run chkdsk /f from a command prompt. Accept invitation to run at next boot.
2. Download and run Malwarebytes .
3. Try the clean boot diagnostic procedure.
4. Try a repair install.

Jerry

Thanks…I’m trying it now. Chkdsk is running.

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Things to try.
1. Run chkdsk /f from a command prompt.
2. Download and run Malwarebytes just to be sure
3. If you have a restore point prior to experiencing the error, try a system restore
4 Try the clean boot diagnostic procedure
5 try a repair install

Jerry

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Jerry’s post pretty much summed up the recommended actions, now that it seems to be a regular occurrance. I would especially be interested in the situation after steps 1 and 3.

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Jerry’s post pretty much summed up the recommended actions, now that it seems to be a regular occurrance. I would especially be interested in the situation after steps 1 and 3.

I ran Chkdsk and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. XP booted normally following the check. I’ve now downloaded Malwarebyes and it’s running at the moment. I chose a full scan of my boot drive. So far it says “Object infected: 23” but I need to see what it thinks are infected.

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I would not be surprised that this problem is caused by Malware. Quite often these intermittent problems are caused by nasties. I think you might be surprised. You can always quarantine the items found without actually deleting them and see if something is broken by their removal.

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To see the results of your chkdsk run, type start > run > eventvwr. Click on application, then View > Filter and for Event Source, select winlogon and click OK. It would be interesting to see if it found anything.

Jerry

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To see the results of your chkdsk run, type start > run > eventvwr. Click on application, then View > Filter and for Event Source, select winlogon and click OK. It would be interesting to see if it found anything.

Jerry

I looked for the results of the chkdsk (thanks for the tip on finding the results) and here’s what is says:
Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 34 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 34 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 34 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal…
Usn Journal verification completed.

244187968 KB total disk space.
216150248 KB in 159508 files.
66296 KB in 15342 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
385376 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
27586048 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
61046992 total allocation units on disk.
6896512 allocation units available on disk.

Also, Malwarebyte’s finished its full scan and all it found were a bunch of instances of “Adware.VideoEgg” in registry keys and a couple of folders and one .dat file. From what I know of Video Egg, I wouldn’t think these would be causing the problem, right?

So if I’m reading the results of these two scans correctly (chkdsk & Malwarebytes) so far I don’t have any reason for my boot problems, right? Thanks for the continued advice!

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It’s unlikely the adware caused your problems. Don’t know about the .dat and folders. I assume you did a check all and removed them The chkdsk may or may not have helped especially the inconsistencies. Only way to tell is to try a few boots and see if your problem is still there.

Jerry

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