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Thread ID: 34549 2003-06-16 12:06:00 PC Freezing on boot kerry31 (4027) Press F1
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152987 2003-06-16 12:06:00 Hi All,

I have recently reformatted my hard drive, and when I went to reload win XP Pro, it froze on me. I have since put the same hard drive into another machine, and loaded win xp onto it.

Returned the hard drive to the old pc (2 yrs old), went to reboot, but still will not load up.

I have no strange noises, or anything it just will not boot up fully at all. It gets to the stage where the grey bar is across the bottom of the screen and just freezes.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I should be checking next? I am really hoping it is not the mainboard.

Thanks Heaps 		kerry31 (4027)
152988 2003-06-16 21:53:00 Most likely either memory or power supply, especially since the operating system is OK in the other computer.
If you have 2 pieces/sticks of RAM on your motherboard, remove one, try it, then swap out with other. This will prove or disprove the memory fault.
Substitute another power supply of the same or greater rating for testing of power supply. 		Pheonix (280)
152989 2003-06-16 22:57:00 Unless the other PC you used to load XP was identical to the one you are now having problems with, you will have some problems with incorrect drivers.

Windows XP will have loaded all the default drivers for the motherboard, video etc for the machine on which you loaded XP on the HDD. If they are not the same devices as the one you are now trying to run it on, then there will likely be some major clashes. 		godfather (25)
152990 2003-06-17 07:10:00 Thanks Heaps. I have tried the RAM and power supply options - still the same. Put is all back the way it was, and thought that I would format the hard rive again, in order to stop any driver conflicts - however - this is going from bad to worse...now it will not recognise the C Drive. Bios does, but will not locate the hard drive under any letter.

At least I know the hard drive and ram are fine.

Thanks 		kerry31 (4027)
152991 2003-06-17 14:36:00 Have you checked the battery? Mzee (158)
152992 2003-06-17 22:47:00 I am not very techie, but a friend has just had this same problem. It took her three weeks to find it and I think she said that the cause was that with XP the first PCI slot needs to be left free. Gates Engineering strikes again? Pams_Note (4021)
152993 2003-06-17 22:51:00 Unfortunately, I believe the fault lies not with Billy, but with motherboard manufacturers/chipsets. If you utilise the AGP port, it can sometimes cause a conflict with a device in the first PCI slot closest. Not sure exactly why, but I believe they share some resources. Pheonix (280)
152994 2003-06-17 22:52:00 Good point Pams_note, I had forgotten about that problem. Pheonix (280)
152995 2003-06-18 07:02:00 Thanks everyone for teh help on this one .

I have removed all cards from teh PCI slots, as none are essential . First PCI Slot was empty - but thought I would try removing all to see if that helped . Unfortunatley - still the same .

Even when booting from Boot Disk, still will not recognise the C Drive .

Re: checking the battery . I am not too sure how to actually check the battery apart from replace it .

I do have a Graphics card in the AGP Slot as well .

Thanks again 		kerry31 (4027)
152996 2003-06-20 05:39:00 I wouldn't hope for much success booting Windows XP on a disk which has had the installation perfomed on another machine.

The way the IDE scheme has been "enhanced" to handle disks much bigger than were ever dreamed of can give problems. The various "heads, cylinders, sectors/track" numbers used by the BIOS are arbitrary if you use the "auto" option, rather than entering the figures yourself. There is no guarantee that a disk formatted on one mavchine will work properly on another with a BIOS from a different manufacturer.

The only sure way is to format, and install the OS on the machine which it is to be used on. Microsoft have taken some steps to ensure that you do this with XP. :D 		Graham L (2)
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