I have a Gateway home computer, and everything on it is plugged into a surge protector. Last week, we had some really severe lightning storms. I was using Quicken, and the power went out. The computer turned off and then on, and since that time, I have been having problems with it. It has no trouble booting if it's been less than 3 hours since I last used it, but when I let it sit overnight, and go to turn it on in the morning, it will get to the black screen with the Windows XP logo, and it will freeze, then restart. IT did this 8 times today!!! When it finally boots, it will freeze up at random times, and I can't press Ctrl+Alt+Del, because that does nothing. How can I find what is causing the problem? Any help is welcomed.

try running scandisk and fixing errors on the HDD. usually if you were writing data to it and youp power down it can cause freezing or not being able to boot. in the command prompt type in chkdsk /r

To get Xp equivelent to scandisk, chkdisk or whatever, go to my computer click on the drive your operating system is on , then properties and select tools at the top of panel. You may be able to run this from safe mode Good luck

thanks guys. I ran the HArd disk test, and it came back fine. I decided to try to repair Win XP via the option on the CD ROM, an it froze with 25 mins. left. I then reformatted/repartitioned the drive, and installed the OS. It worked, but after using the computer for like 5 minutes, XP Froze again!!!! Any more ideas?????

Hi, having the same problem with fresh WinXP Home install. Only change to my previously working sys is a new (RMA'ed) Western Digital 200GB Caviar HD (Old one got the click of death). The drive has been freshly zeroed out, still windows takes ~3minutes to boot each morning, crashes on login -- and then works fine for hours afterwards. Also Tried: Upgrading to newest bios (v. 14)for my Motherboard(Abit KD7a + Athlon 2600 XP) Calling Western Digital, who recommended switching power and ide cables Scheduling CHKDSK /F on reboot (reports 4 kb in bad sectors, could this be it?) Because my Linux HD (FC2 / Gentoo) works fine, i think it may be the HD. Any recommendations?