Ok I'll try to make this short. I built my system about a year ago which has had no problems. About 4 weeks ago it started to hang on start up, so i defragged, ran virus/spyware removers used Norton Windoctor to fix errors, check disk, basically the works. It progressively got worse and the MOBO logo would stay on the screen alot longer and then it would show the Win XP logo for a couple of seconds and restart so it was stuck in this cycle. Sometimes it would seem to boot up but the screen is black. Eventually I could not boot into safe mode. So as a last resort I booted from the OS cd used repair to run FIXBOOT and FIXMBR which booted the computer into normal mode with no problem, but I had to do it almost everytime I booted up, eventually that stopped working and when I would run FIXMBR it would have trouble finding my file system type (NTFS) and stated that my MBR might be corrupt. So I thought my OS might just be getting unstable so I'll just re-install windows. Well it locked up 3 times while I was re-installing windows, usually during the geographical settings or any of the prompts that needed user input. So I finally got it installed but now my pc does not recognize my video card and does not install the standard VGA driver for it. If I check display properties it says "default monitor on" thats it. If I go to device manager and check the display apapter, everything says unknown device. Under driver it has no driver installed and if I choose update driver, it will install the driver for my card and show ati 9800 under device manager but then my pc boots up with a black screen. After trying different things I finally got it to boot up with the video card drivers in normal mode, but the desktop disappeared to a black screen after about 5 seconds. First I thought it was my OS then I thought it was my hard drive, now I think it might be my graphics card but im not sure. My graphics card was slightly overclocked just to see if I could do it and I guess I just left it like that for about 6 months. Any suggestions? (THANKS) Asus A7N8X2.0 Deluxe Radeon 9800 128mb Athlon 2500 OC - 3200 1GB Ram

you could try your card in another machine !

I would also suggest a harddrive diagnostic test. Download one from your harddrive maker. A lot of what you've said indicates possible HDD problems. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

Also if u happen to have another graphic card, try it

I found my old Radeon 9800 128mb card and everything seems to be running good. Guess its time for another card. Thanks for your replies.