Topic: boot up problem

[daveeb]

hi guys n gals

i'm having trouble when i boot up. for the last half dozen times i get as far as the desktop screen appearing but without any of the desktop screen icons loading.  i cant do anything and have to reboot, scandisk kicks in and everything loads ok second time.  anybody know what this could be and how to remedy it.  

i don't think i've installed anything just prior to the time this started.

runnung windows ME (pah)  

thanks

[TR]

Simple guy that I am Dave..ME has system restore, what about restoring back to a time last week when you knew it was ok.

Just a thought Dave  

[daveeb]

Thanks hookstar i did think of that, i'll use it as a last resort but with ME at least it often tends to make the situation worse.      *edit  the same thing has happened once or twice in the past as well, just that its recently happened 3 or 4 times consecutively, so i'm not sure if using a restore would be very helpful *

[TR]

Told you I was simple Dave  :-[

I take it you have your AV up todate and Adaware or something else.

[Simon]

Is is just the icons, Dave, or is the toolbar also missing?  What happens if you right click your 'empty' desktop?  Is there an option to tick under Auto Arrange which says 'Show Desktop Icons'?

[Sandra]

I was looking for something similar for a fault like that on an XP system Dave.
From what I can find out its an MBR problem, XP tends to repair any corrupted or damaged files on subsequent reboots, not sure if ME does but it sounds like by running Scandisk that sorts it on yours.
Does ME have a repair MBR facility ?
If it does if you run that it should hopefully cure the problem, if not try running something like Nortons WinDoctor  

[daveeb]

I'm starting to wish now i had XP, sandra. whats an MBR problem ?  system restore is my last resort so i'll hope that its coincidence and stick my head in the sand for a while.  

[Sandra]

Master Boot Record, its mis reading it for some reason Dave, I think.
So it doesnt load properly, running scandisk corrects it by the looks of it but I dont know why it is getting corrupted or otherwise becoming unreadable  

[Sandra]

Something for you to pass a few hours with here Dave :

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;273738&Product=winme

It may help  

[Dack]

This might interest you

A couple of times that I have created new folders they have vanished only to re appear after a re boot? Over the weeks this problem became worse with icons getting confused and taking an age to appear, the fix was to increase the size of the icon cache - a useful utility called Actvicon is available for free download at http://www.cursorarts.com/ca_ai.html this makes editing the cache size and other fixes easy! I feel this may be a ME glitch as there seem to be similar problems on a lot of other ME systems. I had less icons on ME than on 98se with the same size cach. Anyway all is well now.

Came from:
http://www.btinternet.com/~cerrig/problems.htm

[daveeb]

thanks everyone, i'll have a look at the references provided.  Its actually booted up ok the last two times.  Simon..sometimes the toolbar loads, sometimes not, either way the system locks up.