Thanks for the advice posted in response to my recent question regarding startup / shutdown problems.

I have performed thorough and up-to-date virus scans, reduced the number of programs loading at start up via msconfig, ran a "Thorough" Scandisk, increased the RAM from 64MB to 192MB (less 8MB shared memory, thus shows 184MB), and installed a Windows update which delays shutdown long enough to allow data to be written to the drive from the cache.

However, there still seem to be boot up problems. It sometimes stalls just prior to when the Windows password is due to be entered. Occasionally, it does not reach quite as far as this and reverts to the memory count, then runs Scandisk, then boots! In the latter case the screen seems to flash just before the restart.

These problems have been occurring frequently for quite a long time. But they are intermittent rather than occurring every time, thus going through an exhaustive selective startup prcedure probably will not reveal anything, as well as taking ages!

I need to start installing a newer version of Internet Explorer soon, and also Norton SystemWorks. These involve major system configuration changes, but I am not sure it is wise to go ahead until the boot up problem has been resolved - and it is hard to know if the problem is truly resolved because of its intermittent nature.

Would it therefore be wise to hold back on these major installations until a few weeks / months of problem-free booting have occurred?

Is there a utility which will analyse the boot process in depth and indicate potential problems which might help to pin down where the problem is most likely to be occurring?

Thanks

I'd be tempted to create a new partition and do a clean install in the new partition, thus creating a dual boot system.
If the clean install works ok, then you know that this is software problem or a hardware configuration problem and you will probably need to reinstall windows.
If the new install has problems (and you have configured your hardware properly) then I would suspect that you have a hardware problem.
I would then minimise my hardware to try and isolate the culprit. (ie remove as much hardware as possible and then reinstall it one by one until the culprit is found)

I haven't seen your previous posts but seeing if you have the problem in safe mode may help.
If safe mode is ok then the windows install is probably ok but you probably have a driver or configuration problem.

Maybe your RAM modules are not making a good contact in the slots until the computer warms up a bit . Try cleaning the contacts and reseating the RAM.