OK, thought I'd try TBR for the PC as it always comes up trumps with the motors.
Darent turn PC off, have to leave it on standby (which is causing magor head aches with er indoors as she is on an eco-friendly, standby mode is bad drive this month!)
Ok this is how it goes if I accidently turn off instead of standbying, this is the actual account of last times rigmorole!!!
press button - a few seconds, black screen, nothing else, pc definitely doing something somewher cos I can hear it ticking over, but no windows.
give up, turn off then back on after a few seconds - get to the bit where i can chose which name i want to log into, click me (or anyone else) - black screen, see above
give up etc etc - get to bit where it says 'Windows is startin up', stays like that for 15 minutes.
give up off on - get to the names bit, same as above
give up- get the names bit about 10 more times.
give up, off and on again - bingo, opens up as normal.
checked for viruses with 4 different companies including my own Zonealarm, nothing, only thing i can think of is could be a monitor driver or something, but I have the latest driver as far as I am aware.
Any ideas?, any help most appreciated.
Cheers
CBG
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
If it's running XP there might be something in here tinyurl.com/yk2tnl , otherwise go back a few pages and select the appropriate operating system.
--
L'escargot.
|
Yep, its XP, may be me but cant find anything there that will sort it. Any other ideas?
Cheers
CBG
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
very difficult to sort out without being in front of it.
Open the task manager and see what is running, something is not behaving properly but without knowing what is on the system who can tell.
What happens if you start up in safe mode and then shut down ?
|
Nothing unusual running as far as i can see, but as its not starting up i suppose there may not be anything showing at the mo?
if i do safe mode it starts up fine every time, but, then when i shut down and try normal mode its back to off, on, off, on again.
thanks and any further ideas gladly accepted.
CBG
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
Start in safe mode, run msconfig (START - run - msconfig - {enter} )
Disable items on start up and restart until it works properly again - easiest way is to disable everything and then see if it works; if it does, re-enable things one/two/three at a time until it fails again. Then bingo! you'll know what's killing it.
This is assuming it works fine in safe mode. only other option is hardware problem that doesn't allow it to run properly >VGA (safe mode) resolution.
hth
Lee
-- You know, it\'s not like changing toothpaste
|
|
|
|
Run the virus checker and fix anything.
Run something like Spybot - check advanced mode / tools / startup and disable anythign you don't like the look of. You can always enable it again, it doesn't actually delete stuff.
Run something like HiJackthis and have a look at stuff in the registry. This one does delete, so follow the sintructions to create a backup before deleting anything.
Clean up everything you can find.
Then do not shut down, pull the plug. Essentially you may have somethign starting up in normal mode which is loading into memory. Killing everything in startup will be overwritten by that program when it closes down. If you prevent it starting and then yank the plug to prevent it overwriting anything, you may beat it.
If it fails to start, then kill it and then using F8 startup using the last known working registry settings - then try again.
|
Cheers to all,
Will give all these instructions a go, tomorrow!, dont think the cider addled brain can cope with anything vaguely complicated tonight, and anything to do with computing is complicated to me at the best of times.
Have tried Hijack previously and it found nothing out of order though, I'll give it another go, you never know.
Right, time to turn the PC to standby and have another pint.
A good evening to you all and thanks for your time.
CBG
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
Click on the Performance tab of Windows Task Manager and check how much Physical Memory is "Available" compared to the "Total". Is it (like mine was) running low on memory?
--
L\'escargot.
|
Here we go, Phys memory is ok, plenty available, thanks for the idea though.
Virus Check found nothing, Spybot start up had nothing unusual in it, Hijackthis also drew a blank on dodgy registry stuff., spose the next thing is still to pull the plug?, although i havent actually deleted anything, is it still worth a try?
Next step will be disabling start up stuff as suggested by Lee, but I'm afraid to turn the darn thing off, took 16 on n offs last time!!! As long as it comes on in Safe Mode I suppose I'l be ok.
Here goes ......................................................................
.............................
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
Very strange, started up in VGA Res (what is this by the way?) and it started up ok, except of course everything is blurred and too big for the screen, I am confused now.
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
OK, here we go again, disabled all on startup in safe mode, tried off and on, still didnt work, have re enabled em all now.
spose its not that then.
so here we are in vga res again, one other thing that i probably should have mentioned earlier is, recently and this is months after the startup problem began,when i do start up and it actualy works i get the found new hardware message, than pc cant find the new hardware, could this be related or is it just something else that has gone belly up?
Should I get me old monitor out and ditch this flat panel thingy?
Cheers all and looking forward to suggestions a plenty.
CBG (squintin at the screen)
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
Starting in VGA mode uses the generic Microsoft VGA screen driver. But starting in safe mode does not load a lot of Windows services etc. So the fact you can get into safe mode means you have a good chance of fixing it.
BTW it's blurred on a TFT screen because of the way lower resolutions are mapped onto the real pixels of the TFT. An old CRT monitor can handle different resolutions natively without the screen doing anything.
What's got me intrigued is the new hardware found and subsequent failure to install. This could be related. What hardware might you have swapped/added lately?
Have you checked to see if there is anything in Event Viewer (run eventvwr from Start -> Run) under the System event log.
|
Greetings All and thanks for the replies, most helpful.
New hardware thing - well I havent added/swapped anything recently, as far as I am aware neither has my daughter (er indoors hasnt, thats a definite "How do you switch it on?" !!! : - ) )
Today it only took 3 attempts to turn on, please Lord may this be the norm.
New Hardware thingy has gone, yesterday I uninstalled and reinstalled the flat screen driver/s, maybe this could be why it has gone but it shouldnt , what the heck it aint there anymore?, everything is now a tad smaller on the screen than was usual and my quick try at changing this through the normal control panel/display method didna work?, I'll give the above instructions a scan later.
Event Viewer, this is a new one on me, never even new it existed, 2598 events, to be honest not exactly sure what I am looking for.
Also have notices that screen jumps/flickers every minute or so, also get the occasional black screen then 2 seconds it comes back ok, i dunno, computer!
Cheers all, I am learning loads.
Regs
CBG
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
|
|
|
i reformatted one of my 'bargain £30 computers yesterday and used a windows 98 cd when all done i couldnt get it to recognise my monitor no matter what i did at more than 16 bits so put your old monitor back on and fire it back up
make sure all cards are secure in the back of your computer and all leads are tight
|
A flat screen monitor has a native refresh rate (60Mhz) and a native resolution (normally 1280 x 1024 for both 17in and 19in models).
If you right click on an empty area of the Desktop Adapter tab>List all Modes you can choose the appropriate colour/resolution/refresh rate.
Your display will have large (perhaps blurred) displays if the setting is, say, 800x600, which is not the default setting for a TFT monitor.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What's for you won't pass you by
|
Burgers, one and a half hours of turning on and off and i have finally had to start up in VGA res mode, definitely not right!!
will try getting the old monitor down and hope that works, anyone got a hammer!!!
Cheers
CBG
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
|
|
|
|
|
