Windows XP freezes at logo screen

[GFab]

Hello all.

I am having a problem with one of our work computers.

Here's the story.

We had to renew our subscription with Norton Antivirus for our 3 computers at work. It should have been automatic but something always gets screwed up. So I called their 800 number and get some lady in India. She connects to my computer and downloads the new 2008 Internet Security program to my desktop along with an add-on program. She says it will take 30 to 40 minutes to lead the program. I said there's no way I am allowing her to run my computer for that long and I said I would install them myself.

All went fine on the 1st computer. I went to the 2nd computer and downloaded the two programs. As I was installing the Internet Security program I got an error saying that I did not have permission to access a registry line (don't remember what line it was). They gave you a link for technical assistance. I click on that and it told me how to get permissions using the regedit by highlighting the HKEY_CLASS_ROOT folder and going to Edit and then Permissions. It said to make sure both Administrator and System were listed and that both had Full Control and Read checked. They were. And then it said to click on Advance and make sure "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects. When I checked that box is when the program froze up. I could not ctrl-alt-del out. Everything then froze so I had to power off using the power strip. When I turned it back on it loads up to the blue screen with the Windows logo and under that it says Windows XP. There are two bars on the top and bottom which should be scrolling left to right as it is loading but they aren't moving. It just sits there.

I called Norton back up and now I get a guy from India. Does anyone else have trouble understanding these tech support people when they have an accent? Anyway I told him what I did and he said I should have called them first. Yeah, maybe I should have but I followed their instructions to a tee and now one computer is down for the count. I decided to cool down and loaded the Norton on the 3rd computer with no problems.

Technically I did not change any values in the registry. I know if you screw it up you can crash the computer. But I don't think I did anything to it. I tried several things but nothing works.

The one computer is a Dell Dimension 4600 Pentium 4 2.8GHz, 1MB cache. 512MB DDR SDRAM at 400 MHz, 128MB DDR NVidia GeForce FX5200 graphics card, 80 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drive with Windows XP Professional factory installed. The only Windows CD I have is the reinstallation CD.

Does anyone have any suggestions to try. Or is this thing now a paperweight?

Thanks

GFab

[glc]

If you can get it to start up in safe mode, do a system restore.

[GFab]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that.
It freezes at the same point in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking and from a previous last known good configuartion. I can't get to a restore point.

[glc]

See if the Dell CD will allow you to do a repair reinstall. It's not a custom restore CD, it's a generic XP CD that's bios locked to a Dell.

Procedures are in the Tips and Tricks forum, and you will probably need to download drivers from Dell if you don't have the Resource CD that came with the machine.

[GFab]

I have the CD's which came with the computer.

They consist of:

- Reinstallation CD Microsoft Windows XP Professional Including Service Pack 1
- Drivers and Utilites Dell Dimension ResourceCD (Device Drivers, Diagnostics & Utilites and computer documentation).
- Application CD for reinstalling Dell Tools System Software (Antivirus Software, Support Software, Multimedia Software and Internet Software).
- Application CD for reinstalling Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.3.4. SP8 Basic System Software
- Dell E773c Color Monitor User Documentation CD
- Microsoft Office XP (version 2002 service pack 1)
- Microsoft Office XP Small Business

Not sure why I listed all the CD's but I did. I assume you mean to try the Reinstalltion CD Microsoft Windows XP Professional CD?

I'll check out the Tips and Tricks forum. I think I saw what you are saying in there before.

Oh, and thanks for your help GLC.

[GFab]

Okay, maybe there is something else wrong with the computer.

I did what the Tip and Tricks page said about Repair Reinstalltion of Windows XP (using XP CD).

I got all the way to where it said to press R key to repair Windows XP.

It starts reinstalling windows XP and gives a count down of time remaining (39 minutes).
It gets to 33 minutes left and I get an error message:

The instruction at "0x75d1a23e" referenced memory at "0x073040d8" The memory counld not be "read". Click on OK to terminate the program. Click on CANCEL to debug the program.

Both options restart the installation process and it stops at the same point.

So I can't even load Windows onto it. Could the hard drive be bad?
Excuse me for being stupid if that is an obvious answer, lol.

[glc]

Boot it with the Resource CD and run diagnostics. That's what they are for.

[GFab]

I tried to run a diagnostic on the system but since I was in the middle of reinstalling Windows when that error message popped up the diagnostics won't run.

I think I'm getting deeper into a hole here.

[glc]

Try pressing F12 at startup and see if it will run diagnostics that way. If the diagnostic partition is intact, it should work. If that doesn't work, either the hard drive is bad or the diagnostic partition is not present or wiped.

[357mag]

All these big software companies have their tech support in India. Or Thailand or one of those countries. And they all have strange ways of talking. They always say the word "right" after saying your name or something. I used to have a math teacher and he was from India and he talked the exact same way.

I spent an hour on the phone with Microsoft tech support about my keyboard. Same thing. Same manner of speaking. "Right". Very annoying.

If you read the reviews about Norton on Amazon, nobody likes their software. I personally have had fairly good luck with it, although presently I don't have any of their software installed.

[GFab]

Crisis Solved

I had a computer tech guy come in over the weekend. The computer is now up and running.
As it turns out it was nothing that I did.

First, there are some sectors on the old hard drive that are bad. He put in a new hard drive and made the old one a slave so we can get files off of it. So far so good except I can't find the old inbox.dbx and sent Items.dbx files for Outlook Express. I did a search for them and they are just gone! (Any help on that one would be great).

And the second problem was a bad video card. The caps on the old card were about to pop. That's why I got the blue screen. So he replaced the card and now it's working.

Thanks for all your help though.

[glc]

Data recovery software may find those files, PC Inspector is free. However, they may have been in the bad sectors. If you really have to get them, you can try Spinrite. It aggressively scans inside the bad sectors and recovers all it can. Is it worth $89 to maybe recover them? A Spinrite run can take a few days, you will need to dedicate a machine. It can be anything that can recognize the drive, Spinrite runs from its own bootable media.