One again I must turn to my bbs buddies to save my computer. Apologies in advance - any help is appreciated. I am running windows xp on a dell 1.6mhz p4 with 384mb ram. About 7 days ago we had a power failure and the pc shut down. When I rebooted, the computer took FOREVER to start up - we are talking 10 minutes at least. When it comes on, all you see is the "www.dell.com" blue writing, which disappears after about 3 minutes, then the screen goes black, before eventually booting. Everything seems to run normal after that. The next time I rebooted it did the same thing, but this time I got the dreaded blue screen of death (my wife told me we did - i did not see it). That too eventually disappeared and the PC completed its boot. The only recent installation was a USB SD Card reader? I have updated my virus software and run a complete scan - no viruses. My own suspicion is that the HD is damaged, but I don;t really know. Any ideas?
well, first thing. If the BSOD had come up upon boot...it would not have continued to boot. That might have been the CHKDSK screen that comes up when the computer has been shutdown abnormally. Has it booted normally since then? or is it still taking forever to boot?
I just checked this with the wife, and she said that she did a manual reboot after the BSOD and it started up a bit quicker after this - in 2 or 3 minutes. On this second reboot, windows said "Window has experienced a major fault, do you want to send details......" Have not tried to reboot again since then for fear that i won't be able to get it started again
Sounds like the boot time is going down. When did the message come up about the major fault? After the OS had fully loaded? and did it continue to boot to the OS? Im assuming so since you said you hadnt rebooted since. If so, is the computer functioning normally?
"You're using a 286, don't make me laugh. Your windows boots up in what, a day and a half?" Courtesy of Weird Al Yankovic. Sorry I don't have a real answer for ya, good luck.
Well I hope you are actually running a 1.6 ghz and not a 1.6 mhz. I don't think that would quite meet the minimum requirement for Win XP . I would check in the event logs, see if there if there are any errors/warnings that show up in there. If the problem started soon after you installed the card reader, just uninstall it, reboot and see how the pc acts after that. You can always reinstall it later if it turns out that isnt the problem.
