Win2000 Logo Flashes Repeatedly on Boot

[fidman]

OK - This one is confounding me.

I have a legal copy of Win 2000 which has worked fine for 4 years. PC is Intel 350Mhz 128Mbyte 14GB disk Dell desktop about 4 years old.

Six months ago I installed Linspire (so now Linspire boot sector is first and I have to optionally choose Windows 2000) but both have been stable, Linspire is on its own partition.

Recently (two weeks ago) I started having this occur

1. Boots Fine
2. Boots with W2K Logo screen flashing ten times per second then...OK
3. Boots Fine
4. Boots with W2K Logo screen flashing ten times per second then...OK
etc etc

The system is dual boot with the default to Linspire and secondary to Win2000

I have Avast AV and Sygate Firewall latest copies and to the best of my knowledge no Trojans Worms or Viruses

It seems to have started since I upgraded from I.E. 5.0 to I.E. 6.0 downloaded from Tucows.com but that may just be coincidence

When the problem occurs the sequence is as follows

Boot Hard drive and display Linspire /Windows Option - Choose Windows

Then Black screen with white vert progress bars along bottom screen while W2K loads

Then Windows color Logo appears and flashes intensely about 10x per second for about four seconds

Flashing Logo is removed

Then pale blue screen "Windows is setting up your personal settings"

THEN DESKTOP LOADS AND THE SYSTEM IS PERFECTLY STABLE FOR 10 HOUR PERIODS OF OPERATION.

I can reboot and the "problem" flip-flops every other time I boot.

Regedit shows nothing unexpected in the RUN or RUNONCE folders

Any ideas ? Why the flip-flop of the problem and not every time?

[glc]

First thing I'd do is update (or roll back, if you recently DID update) your video card drivers. I've seen some ATI cards do this and it's a driver issue.

[fidman]

Its been a week or so now and I have been monitoring (pun intended) the operation.

It looks like its a hardware problem. When the Sony/Dell Trinitron monitor Ultrascan P1110 and the pc are switched off (standby power mode) and the computer is turned on then there is about a 50% chance that the screen will blink at about 5x sec.

If I load web pages during the first minute of operation then the screen may blink once or twice until the web page is loaded. (cable 300Kb connection)


Once the machine and monitor have warmed up, rebooting the pc does not appear to have the problem.

Any ideas?

[fidman]

After living with this problem for another week I have determined that when I have a white screen the problem occurs.

e.g. Google home page

but if I have a black or non-plain white screen the problem does not trigger, bbut if I goto Google or any large white display within the first two minutes the screen blinks.

Methinks the EHT voltage is on the way out and when all three guns are firing full RGB to make white, the EHT may be breaking down or discharging.

When warmed up it does not occur.

I wonder if this is a trinitron design problem (do they still use vertical venetian blind color mask?)