PCTech Forums

I recently bought a comp, dont have exact specs on me at the moment unfortunately. I did a fresh install of windows xp on it, and over the last week or so ive installed a few games. Right now its sitting with 2 HDs. The first one is 90 gigs, and just has XP install on it. The second one is 160 gigs, using that for games.

So, problem is this: First week or so everything worked great. Then out of the blue it started taking 5-10 minutes to boot up. Would just be stuck at the "Windows" screen, with the flashing bar on the bottom moving, showing it was loading. Yesterday, it got worse... it would just be stuck there, bar not moving, windows never loading. Oddly enough, it was also VERY faint. Could still see the "Windows" and logo, but barely...like brightness was all the way down. Wasnt the monitor, checked it out and booted another computer on it fine. So... I did get it to boot finally in safe mode, and used system restore to go back a day. That worked (but with 5-10 minute boot time still). After I shut it down... SAME problem occured... wouldnt boot... finally got it to boot in safe mode after a couple tries and it again booted on using the same restore point again.

Any ideas what might be causing such wierd problems? I dont want to have to reinstall windows xp, took a long long time to patch those games heh.

I was reading somewhere I might need to refresh my ESCD or something along those lines.... any advice how I would do that?

Ok, problem solved for now heh. Apparently the card I had my printer plugged into was either the wrong place (seemed fine, it fit right) or just bad... so card is removed and comp boots fine... so good to go for now heh.