computer problem

[Zero271]

When I turned on my computer this morning it wouldn't go to windows xp home at all the screen went black,then I tried to shut it down but it wouldn't shut down so i tried holding it for 17secs and then it shutdown. Do you have any ideas why that might of happened?


System Specs
-------------
Intel® Celeron™ D335 Processor
248MB DDR 333 RAM
149GB 7200 RPM hard drive
CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive
Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics
10/100 Ehternet (NIC)
56K modem
Microsoft® XP Home Edition

[Eagle]

When I turned on my computer dismorning it wouldn't go to windows xp home at all the screen went black,then I tried to shut it down but it wouldn't shut down so i tried holding it for 17secs and then it shutdown. Do you have any ideas why that might of happened?

Dismorning? Let me guess you live in "da hood". :P

Anyway, thats a tough one to figure out without actually looking at it. It could be any number of things. The boot sector could have been messed up, or the hard drive could be dead, or it could be something with XP specifically. Try booting to the windows XP cd and see if it makes it to the first installer screen. If it does, then we can probably rule out all hardware except the hard drive itself. Then you can try restoring the master boot record and see if that helps.

[Zero271]

It's working now but i just wanted to ask to see what caused it.

[RJARRRPCGP]

When I turned on my computer this morning it wouldn't go to windows xp home at all the screen went black,then I tried to shut it down but it wouldn't shut down so i tried holding it for 17secs and then it shutdown. Do you have any ideas why that might of happened?


System Specs
-------------
Intel® Celeron™ D335 Processor
248MB DDR 333 RAM
149GB 7200 RPM hard drive
CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive
Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics
10/100 Ehternet (NIC)
56K modem
Microsoft® XP Home Edition

It's likely that you have a cold PC issue, which is the problem with booting when the room temperature is below 60 F degrees. Seems to be a problem with some motherboards.

[Zero271]

yeah that was probably it becuase it was pretty cold in the computer room.

[zAlbee]

what are we talking about here, a car? :P

[RJARRRPCGP]

what are we talking about here, a car? :P

I had those types of problems before. With my early Athlon system, which uses a Soyo SY-K7VTA-B motherboard, it has bitched at me with the voice, "The VGA card might not be installed properly" when the room was cool.

And with my current motherboard, it has failed to POST with 4 bleeps one morning when I had a Radeon 9600 SE video card temporarily when the room was cool.

[Jakob]

heh, I have an old celeron 433 comp laying around that would do the same thing, only with the standard beep code, it would eventually boot though, probably the same reason, heh, explains a lot:D

[Trotterwatch]

One other theory, is once in a while - say 6 months, XP will decide to run something called Machine Check on system startup. Everytime this has happened to me (twice on 2 different machines) the boot process definately appears to lockup.

You can check if this was the case in the evntvwr.msc run command.

But yeah it's most likely the cold start which caused it.

[Zero271]

Yeah I was pretty worried about it considering I just got this brand new computer 1month ago.