hi, i have been having problems with my system on start-up. The problem ONLY OCCURS AFTER A LONG SHUT DOWN i.e.NOT on a restart or even if i shut-down for a short period of time. Its usually when i leave my system off over night and come to turn it on the following day. The problem occurs just before the WinXP screen appears (not the logon screen the one previous to that). Everything is going fine, and then it just hangs. I have to restart a couple of times to get it to boot up successfully. It cannot be a Windows problem, as i did a clean reformat yesterday, and yet the problem still occurs. Its as though the hard drive isnt being recognised - its weird. Once i get into windows i have no problems at all. Everything works great. Ive noticed that when i come to start-up the PC the USB light on my modem usually flashes during boot up (on a successful boot up that is), and the PC speaker gives one short beep. I can now recognise when the system will hang, as the USB light does not flash at all on start-up, and there is no system beep either- not sure why this is?!?! i.e. if the USB light flashes and the pc beeps - boot up will be successful. if the USB light does not flash and there is no beep - the system will hang. Does this sound like a hardware problem??? Does anyone have any ideas ? regards Jp

Sounds to me like a power supply problem. It seems as if proper voltage is not getting to the peripherals at random times. I would say try swapping the PSU with another one that works well to pinpoint the problem. If not that, it could also be the motherboards voltage regulators but usually not the case. What other drives and components are installed and what is the rating of your power supply? You also may want to check to make sure the mobo is not shorting, in other words no contacts on the bottom are touching the bottom of the case. Also, make sure all of your attachment cables are in good condition and connected properly. Hope this helps. Sempron 2400+ OCed to 2.2GHZ Abit NF7-S2 1 GB PC3200 Ram Thermaltake T2-M4 HSF rmackie@microtailors.com www.microtailors.com

if it is hanging on the windows logo then i would think that it is a windows driver load problem or components within windows maby even memory

it hangs before the windows logo - its hard to pinpoint as it only seems to do it after a long shutdown - so i can only test something different once everday ehwn i start up the machine - annoying. ive got a 550watt power supply, dvd-rw drive(ide 2 primary), cd-rw drive (ide 2 slave), hard drive (ide 1 master), floppy, gameport, and a nvida geforce mx4000. I have a USB modem too. i booted up today without the modem plugged in and worked fine. But maybe it just decided to work anyway - who knows. Ill try the suggestions above tomorrow.

it sounds like the power is not getting to my hard drive and other components. Why do i not get a POST beep sometimes - thats confusing.

I would investigate the BIOS chip. Have you attempted to flash to the latest BIOS? If not try that. I had a similar problem with not getting a post amongst other problems such as a BIOS screen that would hang until reset, incorrect system clock time, incorrect MHZ reading etc. If the problem can not be fixed by the BIOS, the BIOS chip can be damaged or corrupted and may need to be replaced. Is it possible to swap all of your components into a different motherboard and see what happens? Post back if needed. Sempron 2400+ OCed to 2.2GHZ Abit NF7-S2 1 GB PC3200 Ram Thermaltake T2-M4 HSF rmackie@microtailors.com www.microtailors.com