XP booting freezes on the loading screen with windows logo

Incomer

Hi guys, I'm not entirely sure whether this is a software or a hardware problem since I'm not so advanced in this area so please bear with me and if somebody would be so kind as to lend me a helping hand here that'd be much appreciated.
It all started when I cleared my pc of dust. World of Warcraft crashed, had to reset and the starting up screen with windows logo was striped vertically with dotted lines and it froze in a couple of seconds. I was able to boot windows normally several times after going into safe mode and just restarting again, but it was random and worked only a few times. Tried to reinsert VGA and memory, reinstalled video drivers and windows. Then the pc speeker started to make a high continuous beep, according to Award BIOS beep codes it should mean a RAM error, but when I tried a different chipset the problem persisted. I basically tried everything the past 12 hours and nothing helped.
my specifications:

CPU Type DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2600 MHz 5000+
Motherboard Name Gigabyte GA-MA69VM-S2 (2 PCI, 1 PCI-E x4, 1 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN)
Motherboard Chipset AMD 690V, AMD Hammer
Memory Kingston 667 DDRII 2GB
Video Adapter nVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT (Asus EN8500GT)
Disk Drive ST3160815AS (160 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)

Excuse my rough english.

Albin

Remove your ram again, and then clear the ram slot and then insert it again. make sure the Ram is locked in the ram slot.
then check if your hdd cable is connected tight to motherboard & the other end to the hdd.
Also check the power cable to the Hdd.

Good Luck!!

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Albin

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dolreich_c

Hi ,
U can do one thing . BOOT from the Winxp operating system CD . once u reach to the Press R for repair option step and press repair option the command prompt screen will appear. You will get the option 1. c:\windows.
enter and type in d the administrator password.
type c:\chkdsk /p and press enter.
this will repair your system volumes .
restart the system and winxp should boot up.
i hope this will help u .

Incomer

Thanks for the replies, though I've tried those things already. I've even tried installing ubuntu and it kinda had the same graphic bug or smth, the logo in the center of the screen had 2 purple lines which shouldnt be there. And since the only 2 boot options fail (the normal one and the one with VGA, all the others boot fine), I was determined my videocard was the problem so I tried it on my friend's computer (he has identical vga and a similar mb, vista though) aaaand everything worked perfectly. So I'm kinda out of ideas, maybe my motherboard is malfunctioning.

atul484

Which different chipset, you have tried ...

Pl. define your problem clearly.

Regards,
Atul

Incomer

I believe I described it pretty clearly, pc stops loading on the XP loading screen and there are graphic anomalies on display, same thing with linux so I now doubt its a software problem. What difference does it make what RAM i've tried, I think it was a 800mhz 512mb ddr2 something. I've tried all the combinations, 1 module, 2 modules in the same color sockets, everything. Now I can only boot safe mode and the BIOS alarm doesn't go off anymore.

Incomer

So I tried to change my resolution in safe mode and 1024 by 768 16bit color looked like this:
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/7577/myscreent.jpg

Incomer

I found the cause of this, lock the thread.

Wolfie276

what was the cause? i myself is positive you fried something when cleaning, as its the only logical conclusion, but I'm interested in knowing if it was the motherboard or RAM?

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Incomer

It's the VGA ram.. Seems like when I tried it in another system it worked that one time since I myself got it to work a couple of times before it completely went out. I was extra cautious when cleaning, dunno.. my 8500 GT had a couple of misbehaves earlier also, always seemed to be on the verge of overheating, not sure if it was my fault.