Startup problem with WinXP Pro? (cold boot)

[MoxManiac]

Hi guys,

As I said in the other thread where I freaked out about the IRQs I have recently installed Windows XP Pro on my PC. I've finally worked out the "kinks" and everything is working flawlessly now.

I've only run into one problem. When I start my computer in the morning (I typically turn it off when I go to bed, and on it goes when I wake up) one of two things happens: after the WinXP Pro splash screen I get a blank black screen and nothing happens; or I get a blue screen mumbling something about having trouble reading the registry or something (I don't recall exactly; something to do with the registry, however.) In both cases I hit the reset button on my tower, and then I choose "Start windows normally" under the menu. Boots fine into WinXP after that, and I've encountered no problems at all with the OS's functionality. I can even restart without a problem.

My short term solution is to just leave it on all the time. It is WinXP after all, it's stable enough for that But this problem baffles me..

My drivers are up to date, and are "certifed", i've run scandisk and defrag on both drives (which are NTFS), run antivirus scans with both Norton AV 2002 up to date, and housecall.antivirus.com. All went fine.

My next plan is to update the BIOS, is it possible that would fix the problem? (haven't done so since I got the mobo, and the BIOS revision on it is over a year and a half old)

Anyone have any idea why WinXP would have trouble with a cold boot, but not with a warm one?

Thanks for any info.

Oh and my specs:

Abit VH6-2
P3 1Ghz
512 MB SDRAM
Hercules Prophet 3d II dual display (GF2 MX)
Winfast TV2000XP capture card
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 45GB
SB Live!
SupraExpress 56k External Serial modem
Windows XP Pro clean install on C:

[bailey]

my guess would be that the install did not go smothely, or there may be a hardware incompatibly problem, you might try the repaire function with the install cd.

[highrisemech]

It sounds like you have a problem with your boot partition.
Try this boot up into safe mode then go through the shutdown process, with a little luck your system should now start normally.

[DilLy]

But Mox is right about one thing: update that BIOS, even if it isn't the cause of your current problem.
Mine is still fairly new, but came out with an XP specific flash, soon after. It's just a good idea to do this, and get everything updated for the new OS. Then when you have any problems you can narrow it down easier.

Soon all you will be doing is nitpicking about trivial things (ah it's nice )

[MoxManiac]

Good news! Flashed to the latest BIOS and all seems well now!

I checked the event logs and it seems every reboot/restart before updating the BIOS had some ACPI issues - error messages about ACPI in the event log on every reboot. After flashing the bios these messages dissapeared. I guess that was the problem.

Thanks for the help, guys.