Hi, you know that black screen with the windowsXP logo and the scrolling blue progress bar below it(the load screen?)? Well, I can't get past it. I ran chkdsk(chkdsk DRIVE_LETTER :/f) on my windows partitions when I restarted and didn't see any errors. I would appreciate any other ideas? I have a western digital Caviar SE 120Gb HDD. I believe it's the hard drive's prob because my linux partition works fine while i can only enter windows by restarting and selecting "last known good configuration".

That screen you're talking about is known as the XP caterpillars screen :-) Are you saying you cannot boot windows past the caterpillars screen at all? i_XpUser

mmm - Somewhwere, something has changed in terms of one or more of various hardware drivers (including for the vga card) as this ("caterpillar"...?) screen is displayed during the hardware detection phase of boot up. Last known good config working tends to confirm something in that respect has changed...? That you can see the dots... does suggest the vga (safe-mode) mode is OK? So, can you confirm safe-mode works (or not)? If it does work then it may be possibly the XP drivers screen drivers specific to the vga card "have" altered/been corrupted... and that's were you're hanging; although usually this puts you at a blank/black screen..., and you're not getting that far? (Which having said, have known that (on one occasion) where I work, safe-mode didn't work (either) but last known etc. did... Presumably the vga-drivers had altered at either safe-mode/vga-level and/or the actual booted OS level.) If safe-mode doesn't work either then you may be into an XP repair installation? Usually if only the actual drivers specific to the vga card have been damaged, then safe-mode would normally work? Similarly one of the other add-in cards may have a damaged/corrupted driver? Perhaps strip system down to bare-bones (remove all unnecesary cards etc. and see if you can boot up OK. If you can boot up OK (with bare-bones hardware), then re-install in turn each item removed, checking how things are after each individual re-installation? Overall, I think you may be into an XP repair installation to resolve this one? However as you presumably have Linux/XP system I can't/didn't orta... muse much further; have little (i.e. no) experience with Linux (be it in a stand-alone or dual/multi-boot environment). So I'll watch and learn...

I have a XFX Geforce 6600GT video card. Mine is PCI-Express, not VGA. I reinstalled the drivers from the nvidia website but same prob upon restart-caterpillar screen forever. It all started when I was playing this new game and the pc crashed. The BSOD came up with an error message but the PC restarted before I could write any of it down-Any way to check what that message was? Does anyone know of a driver diagnostic tool I can run to make sure? Any other ideas? Thanks.

Can you boot to safe-mode? This M$-KB lists various angles to approach boot problems; possibly one or more may help here. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308041&sd=RMVP That you have this problem following a game instllation... suggests to me time to get into safe-mode (one way or another) and run system file check: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310747 Also have you not got a restore point established prior to this problem game going in? Wise to establish one each time (prior) to installing something new?

http://aumha.org/win5/kbstrtup.php is another useful site; see the problem solving section...