My son attempted to install a Canon scanner on his computerand was unsuccessful (it kept freezing). He uninstalled it, but something happened so that now the computer loads to the splash screen, gets stuck and reboots - this happens endlessly. I have done several system restores on it, and they worked for a while, but most recently not at all. Every once in a while it will boot. (Two days go it booted up once). I have looked in the event logs and they say that certain boot start drivers failed to load (AFD, IPSEC etc.)It also says "A device attached to the system is not functioning." This all started with the scanner, but I don't know what to do now!THe scanner is not showing up in the device manager. Can you help? Val

Hit the power switch, and as soon as the computer starts, start hitting the F8 key... After a few seconds you should see a screen, black with white type...and you should have several options available... Try "Last known good configuration"...

Have you disconnected the scanner and 'all' external devices?

you'll need to use the xp install disk to run a system repair

Unplug the scanner USB connection. Unplug everything else not essential. You only need the keyboard, mouse, monitor, and leaving the sound and network cable connected will probably be okay. Try booting normally. If that doesn't work, do the stuff in response one except try choosing Safe mode. If that works, you will see a screen with a lot of lines on it that don't change for a short while, then you choose Administrator, or your logon name if you have administrator priviledges. When you see the Window that asks if you want to go into Safe mode or use System Restore, choose Yes - Safe Mode If that works......... Win XP is set by default to automatically reboot when it encounters an unrecoverable error. To have XP possibly display an error message you can investigate instead of the computer rebooting: 1. Click Start, and then right-click My Computer. 2. Click Properties. 3. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Settings under Startup and Recovery. 4. Under System failure, click to clear the Automatically restart check box. 5. Click OK, and then click OK. Restart the computer and try booting normally. If you then get an error message instead of it rebooting, look at all of it's details, and tell us what you see. ..... If none of that works, Check your hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostics. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... If you don't have a floppy drive, you can get a CD image diagnostic utility from most hard drive manufacturer's web sites, but obviously you would need to make a burned CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibilty, on another computer if you need to.