I have a Compaq Presario 5900Z PC running Windows 2000. The PC idled overnight last night and power was accidently cut to the tower this morning. PC had not been used before power was cut. I tried to restart, PC froze during Windows 2000 title screen after approx. 50% loaded. Tried several times and PC froze up at exactly the same time on each restart. Tried starting in safe mode which didn't work either. Loaded Windows 2000 disk and tried to repair windows but still had the same problem. Then I reinstalled windows w/o formatting the rest of the drive. Now the PC gets past the title screen, but freezes when detecting and installing devices that are plugged into the PC!! This is where I stand now, is there anything else I can do short of reformatting the entire hard drive? There are some files that I created recently that aren't backed up and I don't want to lose them!! Thanks for the help.

You could try using a boot disk to get into DOS, and then copying your sensitive files to floppies. That would allow you to reformat while keeping your information. But yes, unfortunately the only solution that I can offer is to reformat. If you are having problems even in safe mode, then i believe that a reformat is the only option.

I am having this same problem, any luck?

I had the same problems with a compaq computer and a computer with a Chaintech 7AJA2 Motherboard. (In these cases the bios/cmos battery was damaged) or somehow the powersupply. I first checked the bios and let it load save mode after reinstalling a new batt. With the Chaintech it was a bios update problem and then I had a fire at home (my radiator heater bursted into flames wich caused a sudden power loss due to a shortcut in that instrument). I could not believe it myself, but somehow the computer got damaged. The powersupply did not response well to the on/off switch. Somehow the connector on the mb was damaged. what I did was connect only a spare powersupply to the mb and gave the other a shortcut on pin 4 and 6 (a green and black wire, connect thes two with a wire and the powersupply in your computer should start DO NOT MAKE CONTACTS WITH OTHER PINS) to prvovide the hdd etc from power and let the other one feed the mb with the CPU, the power is at highest usage level when w2k is loading and preparing network etc from 40% app. So my idea is that it looks like that your CPU does not gets enough power, so the screen freezes. Hope this solves your problem. Ps. Also check if by coinsidence your hdd flat cable etc hasn't loosen a tiny bit, gives the same problems. Remco