Hello all,

For the past week or so I've occasionally had trouble starting my PC - when I turn the power on the fans start, lights come on, but then nothing further happens at all.  If I retry eventually I get the usual beep and the system starts normally, although once I got to that stage and the PC shut down just as the Windows screen appeared.

I've not made any system changes at all that might have prompted the problem, and once it does start everything runs normally.  Any suggestions for what might be going on would be much appreciated, thanks.

Just to comfirm that it doesn't just happen to you, my cousins machine does exactly the same thing, and usually after one restart it's fine.  No solution to this found as yet, but one suggestion was that the machine was booting too quickly to load all the necessaries first time, hence being OK after a restart.

Check back later to see if anyone else has had any ideas.  I might actually be concerned at having to reboot 8 times before a successful start up, as that may indicate a more serious problem, which could warrant further investigation.

Hello all.  Just to update you - the problem has continued, and in fact got worse.  It's now taking many attempts to start booting up, and when it does finally start booting it often just gets to the point when the Windows screen appears and then fails (as before, screen goes blank, HD light on).  Even when the system is finally up and running the same thing sometimes happens when I start a program (almost everytime with Firefox, but not at all with IE strangely enough).

I tried the previous suggestion of checking all connections, boards, etc and it seems to have made no difference.  If anyone has any further ideas I'd be really grateful - at the moment I'm quite worried by all this.  Thanks.

Safe mode doesn't make any difference ... and most times it doesn't even get far enough along in the process to select that!

I just tried with the keyboard and mouse unplugged - no change.

Nine times out of ten I don't get a beep - the fans start whirring, the power and drive lights come on but then nothing further happens.  Eventually after retrying I do get the usual beep and it starts up, but then most times it fails whilst windows is starting.  Even after all that it's now occassionally failing once windows is running - in fact this is my second attempt to reply because it did so whilst I was typing here a few minutes ago.

It's definitely getting worse...

I'm running XP w/ SP2 - and yes I've checked for viruses.

Is a software problem likely?  I wouldn't have thought that could explain the initial problem of the start-up not commencing when the power is switched on?

I'm running XP w/ SP2 - and yes I've checked for viruses.

Is a software problem likely?  I wouldn't have thought that could explain the initial problem of the start-up not commencing when the power is switched on?

Not disputing hardware is most likely probability. BUT how much time have you already spent trying to sort it, and still non the wiser?

All I'm saying is, half an hour spent installing a new clean XP installation, would prove it conclusivley regards software/OS or a hardware issue. These intermitant fault finding episodes are just a process of elimination really.