***Please Help***

My computer will not boot correctly. Its a Windows XP system and everytime I power it up It loads the BIOS and then goes to a blank screen. It could sit there for a decade and not do anything but if I reboot by pressing the restart button it restarts and I load it as the Last Known Good Configuration and it loads just fine. No Problems. I just want it to load right. Any ideas? Please Help.

I don't have many ideas... Have you installed new software lately? or perhaps some new hardware?

These are just the typical questions, you never know - it may be something as silly as that.

When I first started reading your post, I thought maybe perhaps the jumper settings on the hard drive may be wrong, the boot order is wrong, or maybe the Master Boot Record (MBR) was faulty, but as you could boot into "Last Known Good Configuration" I doub't it's any of those.

Can you boot into Safe Mode? (Pressing F8 at bootup).
Probably a long shot, but have you changed any service startup options? Or any other bootup related settings lately?

I seem to remember this happening to me ages ago, but I cannot remember how I sorted it :-( I think I may of just did a re-install, although there must be a better solution.

You know, there's a really nice "repair" option with Windows XP. It can repair lots of different errors in Windows by restoring most of the systems files, but it won't change your profil and personnal configurations, softwares, etc...

Just boot with the CD. The first time it will ask you if you want to repair or install, say install. (if you say repair there, it will just dump you in a command line mode with few possibilities). Later, when it will look for current existing OS, before you have the choice to destroy and format partitions, it will ask you again if you want to "repair". Say yes this time, and you should be out of problem after that.

Altho you will have to re install all the updates for Windows.

[Edited on 28-9-2004 by m0rbid]

Are you hearing any loud spinning and then a few clicks? You may need to get close to hear it, but it's possible your hard drive may be in the proccess of taking a bite out of the 'ol the dust...

But before you go realize of course that this is just one of many many possibilites...just one that I am unfortunately familiar with...mine would reload to previous configurations for a while, the it would stop doing anything...lol

Maybe you had a bad shutdown that crewed up the BIOS. Clear the CMOS, and redo the BIOs settings. Also. Try going into safe mode at boot(F8, I think, I can never remember...) I had a similar problem to this when I;d changed motherboards. Turned out, it didn't like my USB keyboard. It still did it on occasion when it would search for usb devices.

Good Luck

Ill try clearing the CMOS tonight. If it doesn't work I dont know what to do. Ill reply with the results.