[jojo]

Recently updated (mobo/cpu/ram) my mother's system, worked perfectly all day thru multiple reboots, then suddenly that evening it stopped booting all the way into Windows. Not gradual, was booting up perfectly and then not at all. WinXP starts to load, gets just past the WinXP logo w/black background splash screen, reaches the Win logo w/blue background & scrolling multicolor progress bar on bottom. But as soon as that screen loads it freezes. Never displays any usernames/password fields in order to attempt to login.

Cannot boot into Safe mode either, same thing happens. Starts to load windows, looks like it's going to work but gets just past the XP logo splash screen and locks up at same point again.

The ASR disk I made - and tested when I made it, %$#& - won't work unfortunately, I just get invalid disk error. I do have the Win XP cd, but I don't want to reinstall windows because my mom has all kinds of other programs on it for which she no longer has the install executables or license keys.

Most recent install/changes to the system were:
1) installation of ASUS Express Gate, BUT the system was booted up normally at least two or three times after that install.
2) Installation of Data Lifeguard Tools v11.2, the new hard drive install/drive copy sw from Western Digital that came w/her new WD 1TB Green drive. (I removed the new drive & her old backup data drives sometime after the problem started in order to do the drive copies on one of my systems, so now the only drive installed on her system is her original boot drive.) Had not used the install utility yet, did start a drive copy but cancelled the copy less than 1/10th of the way thru. Drive copy cancellation and program close both appeared to be normal.

Suggestions anyone? Thanks!!

System:
Windows XP Pro (not sure whether sp2 or sp3)
mobo: ASUS M4A78T-E with 2.6GHz cpu and 4gb ram
120gb Maxtor IDE drive, 50gb used/70gb free

[philthomas]

Try booting with the Windows CD and go to Recovery Console and try running chdsk /r