Freezing at Windows XP logo

Hi! I have an Acer Aspire 5710Z which originally had Vista but I had it reformatted to XP. We've been using it for a little less than a year without much problems until about a couple of months ago when it started to freeze at random times at the windows logo (the one with the blue thing scrolling below). So we had to turn it off then on again and then choose the option to start on safe mode, which worked.

So I've tried lots of things to find out the source of the problem. Apparently, it's not a virus. We've tried to disable all the stuff at the startup but it didn't help. I've been looking around forums and stuff but none has given an answer to my problem.

So I brought it to these tech guys from school, who thought that the problem might be with the drivers. One of the guys saw that there were two intel graphics cards (Intel 945 GM driver) showing up in the device manager, like it was installed twice or something. He thought that might be the problem so he uninstalled the driver and the freezing stopped. I tried downloading newer drivers (actually, I'm not sure if they were newer, I think they were the same as the old one) for the graphics and each time I installed, the freezing problem came back. So the last few months, I've been using the laptop without the graphics card.

It's really frustrating, I'm still not even sure the graphics card really is the problem. Got any other theories or solutions? Should I reformat?

Help! I really want to play my games again! Thanks!

 

Try reinstalling XP

 

that problem screams driver problem and I would agree that its the video card driver or the gpu itself.

when it shows 2 video cards, are they both the same card?

 

Yeah video driver could cause this. Try to clean the leftovers(files/folders and/or regkeys) first THEN install the new driver.
If you don't know how to do that try CCleaner to clean the registry otherwise I'd suggest clean reinstall(format and install).

Yes.

By the way this double-install situation happened to me once but I didn't get a single BSOD....

 

gerryf19: yup, same video card and when i uninstall one of them, both disappear

 

Ok, thanks!

I tried the ccleaner thing and installed the driver but it still froze up at the logo. I saw the two video cards again at the device manager and I just disabled one of them now, the other is still enabled and working. I restarted and so far, no more freezing, but like I said it freezes randomly so I might still experience the problem tomorrow. But hopefully I won't anymore. Hehe! I'll update again if I do.

Why have I never thought of the disabling thing before??

 

It's an obvious and very possible solution and I'm asking myself the same thing now..

 

I've got a Travelmate 240 and an Aspire 3610 - Both have o/b Intel graphics, and both show the adapter twice in Devce Mangler.

I simply assumed as both cards have twin outputs (ie laptop screen plus external port) one was for the primary, the other for the secondary. Both machines have had at least one clean install in the last week or two and using the default Acer restore media results in the two display adapters.

Your porblem prob is software, but I'd be tempted to download a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD and run some diags to try ruling out hardware all the same.

 

Yes, two cards will show if your laptop has the capability to display to external and internal monitor. And they should be the same.

I would never have thought disabling one would prevent a problem, since they are using the same driver

Interesting