Computer Boot Problem

For the past month my computer will only completely boot once out of approximately 2 to 3 tiries. It will generally load through to the desktop screen with the program icons, showing the mouse pointer, and the revolving hour glass and then lock up. Have to do a manual shutdown and restart.

I've trouble shot everything I can think of. Cleaned and repaired the registry, defragged, got rid of all junk files, checked drivers, loaded new drivers for mouse and keyboard, ran diagnostic checks and everything indicates the computer is ok.

I've got all my Flight Sims, FSX, FS9, CSF2 and 3 along with my normal programs so I don't want to have to wipe everything out and start over only as a last resort.

Running Vista Home Premium on a HP, 400gig HD, (2) 320gig ext. HD's, XFX8600/512 graphics card, 4gigs of ram, x-52 Saitek joystick. NO major hardware additions or deletions other than a new Brother 490W printer and the problem was here long before the new printer.

Kind of at my wits end and looking for any help or suggestions to try and solve this problem. It's annoying to have to keep rebooting to get up and running each day.

Thanks

Dewey

Oh man, that sounds rough!

There are a few general steps I'd recommend, but keep in mind you may have to call up HP as this is potentially a hardware problem.

First, I'd clean up my startup folder. hit Start -> run and type "msconfig" (no quotes). Go to the startup tab, and then click 'disable all'. (This box controls your startup programs; none of them are system critical. If you later find out you want something back in your startup folder, open this up again and check the box next to it.) After that, go through and check the boxes by your antivirus, any hardware drivers, the "configuration software" and "Saitek SD6 software" (for your joystick) and anything else that you want to run on startup. (The only things you really want to run on startup are any driver software, antivirus, and other stuff that you use all the time. Anything else is just a drain and can cause crashes like you describe.)

The next thing I'd try is to check your event viewer logs. Start -> run, "eventvwr.src" (again, no quotes.) Then hit Action -> Create Custom View. Set it to show events within the last day or so (or whatever you think is appropriate), that are either Critical or Error (and if there are too many, then only critical), open up the 'event logs' dropdown box and check everything, and hit ok. Name it whatever you like, it'll show up on the left under custom views. You can change the filter settings by right clicking it and picking "filter current custom view".

Hopefully that will give you some sort of idea about what's causing these crashes!!

Hey Traches:::

Thanks for your reply. I've done about everything you suggested. Have my start menu down to a desktop manager that I have open on boot to show my calender schedule, my graphics driver, anti virus and my desktop icons.

I've checked the event viewer logs. Saw a couple of errors and an exclamation mark (critical?) but wasn't quite sure what to do with them. Will run this again following your layout and see what happens....

Dewey

Haha, critical errors could very well be a clue... What exactly were they? There should be a description and an event ID.

There are several error....the most prevelant appears to be listed as "search" and "gatherer"
ID's for these are 3028/3029/3059. If you send to Microsoft Page, it says no information available.

I set up the "custom view box" which I assume will have something in it the next time I boot?

Some of the other error ID's are:
7024/7031/7032/7034/7042/7043 "These are apparently for the operating system.

I'm in a little over my head here

Dewey

Don't worry, I'll talk you through it as best I can... and it's not as scary as it looks

The event viewer is really just a fancy list viewer-- Windows logs pretty much everything, which makes for some really long lists of events. The event viewer allows you to filter out all the useless crap to hopefully find whatever it is that is breaking your computer. It's no different from hiding a bunch of rows in a large excel spreadsheet.

After a little google fu, it seems like your problem is being caused by a service going quirky. Is this computer being used as an MS exchange or sharepoint server? If it's not, are either of these programs installed? Can you pull up the list viewer again and see what shows up a lot under the "source" column for these errors? (If it's easier, you can just take a screenshot and email it to me... rbuchberger@gmail.com )

Also, I imagine you've already tried this but make sure you've run an up-to-date scan with a good antivirus program.

No MS exchange or sharepoint server....Had to boot 5 times today to get the computer started. Loads as far as the desktop with program icons and freezes.

On each boot tried disconnecting the 2 external hard drives. The modem. The keyboard and the mouse. None of these made any difference.

The following items appeared in the event viewer for todays boot attempts.

SOURCE -------and-------- ID

volmgr -------------- 46 appeared 12 times

Dhcp-Client------------ 1002 & 1003---4 times, once as a warning

HttpEvent ------------ 15016 appeared 5 times

Service Control Manager Eventlog Provider----appeared 8 times
7000 & 7026

eventlog -------------- appeared 3 times

Once I get it running and using it, I can shut it down and it will start up again fine. It's only after it has been shut down overnight that the boot problem occurs...

I'm gonna spend some time looking these up-- i'll get back to ya in a day or so! One thing you might want to try in the meantime is to run a memory diagnostic to make sure your ram's not bad-- type 'memory' in the search box and run the diagnostic tool.

I've gotta say though, i'm not entirely sure that I'm going to be able to help you. One of the crappy parts about error logs is that even a computer that is otherwise working perfectly will still log a couple errors over the course of the day, so figuring out which ones are important and which aren't is difficult.

Sorry!! Hopefully you know someone who can be more helpful than me... lol

OK thanks......

Dewey