Weird startup trouble

Once every 3 to 6 startups, XP will freeze on a blank, dark, screen after the progress bar that says starting windows. The only way to get out is to hold the power button until it turns off. Usually XP will start the next time. Maybe once out of 20 times it takes two attempts to start correctly. This is on my 2nd HP laptop (dv4040us), this issue has been going on for about a year but since this is a second laptop with no critical data and it does work fine once started, and I have another, newer computer, I waited until now to try to fix it. Running XP Pro with 1gb memory. This laptop is 4 years old.

Figuring it was a Windows issue, this weekend I formatted and reinstalled XP. Complete, not a repair or anything. Brand new OS install and then all updates including SP3. Now the only thing reinstalled on the computer is OS, Office 2003, and Avast. I figured I was all set and good to go. Not.

Today the new install did the same hang on startup. Held down the power button to reset it and then chose "Normal" startup from the menu and it started OK.

So obviously it was not a messed up 4 year old install of XP that was the issue. I am thinking it might be hardware related as the computer is so clean at this point.

Does anyone have any ideas what to look at next?

Thanks!

 

When you reinstalled, did you wipe out the partition? format? I was leaning toward a corrupt event log at first, which can result in that, but a format would prevent that from crossing over to the new install.

I am inclined to think this is an issue with the harddrive not spinning up properly, then.

Have you checked the SMART data for the drive?

 

Thanks for the reply! I did wipe the drive with a complete format and set up a new partition. How do I check the smart data? I have never heard of that and a quick Google seems to indicate you need a special program?

The computer with the problem is not powered up now as I am on my Windows 7 machine, but I believe XP has a check disk tool so maybe I can try that tomorrow.

 

There are many programs which will show the S.M.A.R.T data.

Here are a couple free choices:

HDTune
http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows - Western Digital software
WD Support > Downloads > SATA & SAS > WD VelociRaptor

 

Well the drive apparently has damaged sectors. Two sections of the "Health" tab on the HD Tune Pro utility say:

"Reallocated Sector Count - Number of damaged sectors which have been replaced: 196611. Status ok"

and:

"Reallocated Event Count - Number of sector replacement operations: 277938179. Status ok."

Of course I really don't know if these 2 messages really mean a problem that would cause the startup issues.

A "quick" error scan shows all blocks as green and good. I will run an thorough error scan tomorrow when I can let it go for the time it requires.

 

This is the first sign of a drive POSSIBLY going bad.

All drives have a pool of unused sectors; when your drive detects an inuse sector going bad, it marks it and moves (hopefully) the data to a sector in the unused pool. This is a normal operation.

Technically, this can occur and the harddrive will continue operating as normal. At some point, though, the number of bad sectors exceeds the pool and they begin to show up as bad sectors on the usable portion of the drive.

A chkdsk report will reveal when this has occured.

Now, I have had drives work for years with a few bad sectors, but generally speaking when bad sectors begin to appear they tend to cascade across the drive.

To be safe, I always remove these drives--sometimes, I use them as back up data drives.

 

Thanks for all that information, Gerry. I just did a thorough scan and it showed no bad blocks at all. So now I don't know what to think about what may be possibly causing the occasional startup freeze!

 

chkdsk /f or chkdsk /r
?

A clean chkdsk does not mean you will see bad blocks--the harddrive will only show bad blocks after the pool of unused blocks is depleted.

However, that is not necessarily the cause of your wierd startup. It is just one possibility

Does event viewer reveal anything at the time the bad boot occurs?

 

Thanks. The event viewer does not seem to show anything but it has been several days since it last happened and I might not be interpreting the few errors that are there correctly. Next time it freezes on startup, I will look at the event viewer immediately afterward and see if anything was logged.

The scan that came up clean was using the HD Tune Pro utility. A chkdsk also came up clean with no bad sectors. It did find some free space marked as allocated. I scheduled a chkdsk /f for when the computer starts tomorrow but I don't think this is related to the freezing. It seems odd that there would be anything wrong with the file system when the windows install is so new.

 

run chkdsk /r--more thorough

 

Thanks. The event viewer does not seem to show anything but it has been several days since it last happened and I might not be interpreting the few errors that are there correctly. Next time it freezes on startup, I will look at the event viewer immediately afterward and see if anything was logged.

The scan that came up clean was using the HD Tune Pro utility. A chkdsk also came up clean with no bad sectors. It did find some free space marked as allocated. I ran a chkdsk /f. It seems odd that there would be anything wrong with the file system when the windows install is so new.

One thing does occur to me rereading this thread and seeing your comment about the HD spinning up properly. Recently when the computer is starting there is a sound like a computer fan makes when they are going bad. It is very distinctive and I have had it before on desktops and you could open the box and see the fan that was not spinning properly. Sort of a groaning sound. Perhaps a HD that is not spinning up properly might make the same sound? It only happens when starting and never once the computer is running so that would seem to point away from a fan issue as in the past the fans I have had go bad would either do it intermittently or constantly, not just at startup. What do you think?

Thanks!

 

a total freeze could be related to too much heat,

 

The HD utility showed the temp as 39C.