System gets "stuck" at Windows 98 Startup screen

[Perplexed]

The system I currently use is roughly a year and a half to two years old, and today, the strangest thing happened when I went to boot it up as usual; It got to the Windows 98 Startup screen (the logo with the little animated strip at the bottom) and it just hung there. The animated strip kept going, but my PC didn't proceed into Windows.

A friend of mine said maybe it's the CMOS battery, so I unplugged the outlet strip for about 15 minutes, and plugged 'er back in. The first thing I did was went into Safe Mode and ran a standard Scandisk. Came back with no errors. So I decided to shut down and restart. Oddly enough, my system booted into Windows as usual with no probs.

Has anybody else encountered this weird occurence, and if so, what was the real problem (what needs fixing so it doesn't happen again)?

[Redo40]

Have you made any recent changes to the system? Like adding/removing software or hardware.

[Perplexed]

No sir. Nothing other than uninstalling a demo of a PC game I downloaded. But that was a few days ago. It didn't act up until tonight. The hardware configuration hasn't changed in I don't know how long.

[Redo40]

See if this helps any.

If it continues to do this you could press F8 at bootup to bring up the start menu and select "step by step" to see where it is hanging up at.

[RodneyMargis]

if you can get into windows by using safe mode get you a copy of norton system works and it shoudl help you to figure out what the probalem is. i had my system od the same thing and i got into it and used norton to repair, then it booted and im still runnning i tnow

[Dan]

how long did you wait for the computer to boot to desktop?
as long as the animated strip is moving, the system is getting ready.
is this still happening or was this just a one time deal??

[Perplexed]

It never booted up. That's the thing. After I let it sit for 10 minutes (at the startup screen mind you) and only seeing the HDD light blink a little then stop, I said to heck with it and hit reset. Same thing happened again and again. Got to a point where it didn't even get past "Verifying DMI data."

I asked my father about the problem and he said to unplug the power strip for 15-20 minutes, then to plug it back in, and try again. Did what he said, and oddly enough, it booted. Hasn't done it since.

I'm chalking it up to heat and humidity - it was down right brutal here the day it acted up - but I ran Disk Cleanup, Scandisk and Defrag to be safe.

[GaryRouth]

I think you have a good chance of being right about it being a heat problem. A system freeze due to heat is more common nowadays because the processors run fairly hot (also much quicker!). . .

Probably the CMOS battery wasn't involved - by turning the system off for a while, you gave it enough time for it to cool off just enough to recover and boot normally.

You also covered the bases when you ran ScanDisk, which would have repaired any files it found damaged from the interrupted/hanging boot.

If you have any worries about the hard drive, you could always download the diagonostics from the manufacturer's website. And you can always check your system board and cpu temps in the Bios Setup screens (usually under an item like "PC Health" or "Hardware Monitor"). Sounds like you're probably OK already, though.

Looks like you "self-solved" this one.
Nice work.
. . . Gary