Have a Dell Inspiron 530 - now about 3 years old. On start up - about 50% of the time and getting worse - it powers on - the Windows Logo starts, it hums for 3 seconds, then the loading logo freezes, the lites dim and the drive stops. Is this a hardware problem i.e. power supply or most likely the hard drive failing? When I hard boot it after this happens, it always starts normal on the second try (with the start error window). I have run the launch trouble shooter, set back to an earlier date and have added NO new hardware or software. Progressively more prevelant over the past 3 months. New computer, new hard drive or a simple fix?

You either have to test with tools, or swap with known good or use software logs if possible. Might boot to bios and see if any hardware health settings are shown. Some of those may be wrong. Could boot to a live cd or usb if you suspect the drive. Could use SMART tools if the drive supports it. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10