PC Powering On 'Weirdness' (question)

[neoglow]

I recently sorted out a friends PC because it was in dire need of both software and hardware overhaul. Ever since he got it back from a place which apparently 'fixed' it, it refuses to Power on properly. Basically, if the machine is off and you switch it on, it flashes up the usual crap at the beginning (black screen, white text) right up until the point when it should load windows xp. It freezes on a blank screen. Press the reset button and it goes through the usual bootup again but this time continues to load windows as normal and all is ok. But every time you start the machine from a cold boot you have to reset it to load windows, and you only ever have to reboot once, it never hangs twice or more.

I found it very strange, I think of myself to be computer literate but after checking all the hardware and doing a clean install of XP it still does it. I've checked the BIOS settings over and over but it just dosent seem to want to play ball.

Any ideas?

Cheers, Mark.

[vertigo]

Did you try resetting the BIOS to default as well as checking it?
And simplifying the hardware that's inside the box?
Try taking out any unnecessary cards, drives and RAM in there and add one at a time until you locate the problem. Start of with the mobo, the HD, one set of RAM and the graphics card and see if it successfully boots. If it does, power down and add another piece of hardware and try again. If the problem happens when you only have one set of RAM in there, remove it and replace it with another one, it might be that one that's the problem. Finally, it could be a semi-dead motherboard, or the PSU might not quite be up to the job so swap those out and see what happens then.

[Freddo]

also the windows event log may shed some light on the situation.

[marcus]

Id do as Vertigo says, start with the bare miniumum and work from there. Sounds like some sort of driver issue so make sure you have updated drivers for any hardware. Id also probably try resetting the CMOS and checking your mobo has the latest BIOS. Troubleshooting things like this is always a pain in the arse, theres not really much you can do apart from take things one step at a time. Does it load ok without installing SP2 do you know?

[Hohum]

Try another PSU. Doubt it's a driver issue as your problem occurs early on after powering up.