Windows freezing immediately after login.

Hi,

Yester my computer starte dplaying up. When I was watching a video, part way through the sound just stopped and a selection on pixels were selected and stretched upwards (so it looked like a colourful barcode) The computer completely freezes up, and nothing works. (Cpas/num/scroll lock all do nothing - the light doesn't go on) And I have to restart. Afterwards it happened again after using the computer for 5-10 minutes.

Now when I turn it on, as soon as I log in it freezes up in the same way (although sometimes it goes black, sometimes it has some other odd image and two white squares parallel to each other, that responds to mouse movement like it was the cursor.

I tried booting to safe mode and it worked, so I've restored it to about 4 or 5 days ago before I installed iTunes 7 and GTA San Andreas. I have also recently installed a firewire card and an 80GB hard disk (which currently has stuff on it). I restored to a date before the installation of the software and hardware, and took out the extra hard disk and firewire card. It still has the same problem.

I have only had this problem once while working in safe mode.

Does anybody have any ideas? When I do a scan with ewido anti-spyware it finds a bunch of tracking cookies and some software I knew I had which it classifies as something bad.

I have been unable to remove these because every time I try the computer ends up freezing up and I have to restart.

Any ideas? I have no idea whether its a problem in software/hardware, if it's a virus etc.

EDIT: I have just found it is a hardware issue, because I got the same problem when using Ubuntu live CD

Specs:

Intel Celeron D 2.66GHz 331

ASUS P5P800 motherboard

SAMSUNG 200GB hard drive

Cheap Ram ("StarRam") (When I removed one stick of it (I have 2x512MB) there was no change)

-

Windows XP Media Centre Edition SP2

Acronis Disk Director Suite (Boot loader& Partion Magic/Disk recovery like software which I can boot to if that helps)

Thanks,

~Wuzzie

#418724

wish I could help... sounds quite a complicated little problem, something that sort of needs to be problem solved in person...

If you have a friend, I recommend you try switching some things around and doing diagnostics with hardware- see if his computer works booting off your Hard Drive, or whether your grapics card has problems in his computer (if you have one then thats a possible cause)...

your aim is just to find out which system component is having the trouble by testing each single part one by one... then once you identify it inspect it, look for cracks, loose cords, fan issues etc... and if it still has troubles replace it.

thats all the help i can offer... sorry... hope others will be able to help further.

#418740

I didn't see which graphics card you have, but you can try replacing it and then see if the same problem happens again.

#418840

Sorry, I forgot to post which graphics card I have... I'm starting to wonder if that's the problem.

Anyway, the graphics card is an old ATI 8800 FireGL or something... Made in 2001. It's been used, I pulled it out from an older (working) computer.

I'll probably replace the graphics card soon though, I'm looking at getting an nVidia 6600GT so if the graphics card is the probem I'll be getting a new one soon anyway.

#418849

Try booting of a WinXP disc, or Symantec Norton AntiVirus disc.

#419221

tough one. most likely candidates are mobo, cpu, ram. you say you removed one stick of ram; how about the other? maybe it's a bad dimm slot. try moving the ram around. what other cards are installed? got a modem or scsi card? remove everything except the video card.

also, next time it freezes, reboot immediately and go in the bios. look for something called 'pc health' or similar. what's the operating temperature of the case and cpu? fan speeds?

you also might want to try a boot disk that has a benchmarking/diagnostic tool on it, such as aida32 or sandra. if it's a dell, you can download a pretty good diagnostic boot cd from their site.

good luck!

#419223

ya, as far as i know dells come with a bootloader that lets you boot to a utility partition to do all tests, although it was useless telling me my graphics card had fried.

#419296

have you checked for a dust builled up on your cpu heatsink? or your gfx card's heatsink..

my computer started to crash because of that last year.

#419511

hey, thanks for the help everbody. It turned out the power supply had stuffed up in a black out, it still worked but it only lasted 2 minutes or so before it broke. I got a new 550 watt one (my old one was 350 watt). Unfortunately now when I try to boot I get an MBR error 1 and 2. I've tried to boot to CD (My Windows disk to mix the master boot record, and my Acronis Rescue Disk to fix my OS selector) and the first time I did it, it worked, but when I pulled out my hard disk to change jumpers, I accidently scratched the IDE cable for both my opticle drives. Now neither of the opticle drives are detected and for some reason one doesn't get any power. I will try using a different IDE cable and post back with the results.

My computer should be OK now, But I will post back if I have any problems.

~Wuzzie

#420314

Almost everything is working. When I boot to my windows partition, I get the error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>system32hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

I have tried copying over hal.dll from a different installation of windows, but that didn't work. I also tried recreating boot.ini, because it seemed to be gone :S

EDIT: I just tried using the expand command in ms-dos to copy hal.dll to my disk. I booted afterwards and got the same error. Also, before it displays the hal.dll error is complains about boot.ini. I don't get enough time to read it.

Does anybody know how to fix this problem?

Thanks

#420325

hal stands for hardware abstraction layer. i have no idea about what that actually means...

the last time i had a problem like that, i reformatted xp. I keep 2 partitions so my files were fine.

#420375

Damn. Can you do some kind of repair to windows where it replaces/creates all your system files, etc. but keeps all your files, settings, registries, etc

Thanks

#420467

I actually had a very similar problem a few days ago. My computer would freeze either immediately after login, or about 5 minutes into a game. Eventually it just stopped booting up at all. I had a hunch that it was the power supply, so I dropped $35 on a new Antec SmartPower 400 watt power supply and hooked it up. Problem solved; apparently I just had a case of dying power supply. If you can, try to hook up your system to a different power supply and see if it acts any differently.

#420643

If you can, try to hook up your system to a different power supply and see if it acts any differently.

ROTFL

R e a d the thread!

#420668

Damn. Can you do some kind of repair to windows where it replaces/creates all your system files, etc. but keeps all your files, settings, registries, etc

Thanks

Wuzzie, I don't know if this works, because i've always reformatted before installed XP. If you put in your XP CD and boot from it, then press the 1st option, then choose repair install [which appears if it detects xp already installed] it will reinstall windows, leaving your files intact.

However before doing this, read up on that, because I've only seen it as an option, never tried it.

#420825

Sorry to bump.

I've dealt with the hal.dll issues a few times. Some software actually removes it when you uninstall. Other issues could be malware.

1. Boot into the repair console

2. Rename the hal.dll to hal.dll.old (IF it exists)

3. Copy hal.dll from i386 folder to system folder - at prompt copy :i386hal.dl_ :windowssystem32hal.dll

4. Then reboot.

If you have more errors than it my be ntldr that needs to be replaced as well. Check out Kelly's Korner on the web I believe there's detailed information about this.

#422949

ROTFL

R e a d the thread!

I don't understand what's so funny...

#422965

???

I got a new 550 watt one (my old one was 350 watt).

If you can, try to hook up your system to a different power supply and see if it acts any differently.

#422970

Hahaha, didn't even see that. Mah bad.

#422973

//Posts Removed

Globox, nice to see you back on the forums . I think you're suffering a misconception over what Croat said--and Croat, there's no need to exacerbate the situation by replying.

-NC

#423037

I've tried something much the same SirSmiley said. It isn't working. I've installed Windows again to an other partition, its working now. I still can't get onto my old partition but I don't think I ever will....

Thanks for all the help I have had. This topic can be closed now or it can sit here and die.

MWAHAHA DIE THREAD

*cough*

~Wuzzie

#423943