This is an old problem that was poosted last year. I am now experienceing it. I went to start the system this morning and all that displayed is the windows starting screen with the black background. I powered off and restated. I was given the option to go into safe mode or restart last good config. Tried the last good config and it hung again. I then tried booting up in safe mode and got in. I scheduled a chkdsk on boot assuming that that there might have been something screwed up there. rebooted and it hung again. rebotted and was offered safe mode again. this time (and all future attempts) hand with AGP440.SYS as the last driver loaded. I check the MS site and they recommend booting from the install CD and disabling AGP440. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to boot from the CDROM. This was the XP Home Upgrade that I had installed over ME last year. HELP!!! Thanks

You need to set your computer to boot from the CD-ROM. This is done by entering the BIOS, usually by pressing del or one of the F keys during bootup. Look through the various screens to find the boot device order and set it to CD first, floppy second and HDD last.

Thanks. I looked before but didn't see that option, I'll give it another go. By the way, do you know if the upgrade CD is actually bootable??

Yes. The only difference is the upgrade CD will want to see your ME disk or product ID.

One of my Dell's pulled that error when the mobo died. Jimi_l

Ok, it has taken on a new twist. If I let the system take the option to boot the last good config it just sits there at the splash screen for XP Home Edition. Well I left it on that screen while I went off to my lap top to search the net. After 10 minutes it actually started windows and did the check disk I requested the one and only time I got into safe mode. No disk errors were found. I backedup what I needed and shut it down to see if the problem had "gone away". When I rebooted it seemed to hand on the splash screen again. I let it go and after 10 minutes (really, I timed it) the startup continued to the login screen. This problem is now consistent. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to track down this slow startup problem? By the way, during this delay there is no disk activity at all. Any pointers would be appreciated. Thanks.