XP hangs at start up

[milefile]

When I turn on my XP laptop it freezes at various parts of the startup process. Pretty much anywhere betwen the black screen right after the first XP screen and the log on screen, including when I log on. So I just turn it off and start over. In general it seems to get a little further each time, until eventually, after about three tries, XP finally runs. Once it's running it's fine. I've called Dell support and they had me disable some services and start up programs but it doesn't seem to have done much. I hate to have to exchange it or send it away to be fixed because I've already put all my software on it and it works once it's running. But I do need to turn it off from time to time.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[risingson77]

Has it always done this, or is it a recent development? Have you tried starting in Safe Mode (hold down F8 during when Windows begins booting)? If safe mode works, you may have a bad device driver. If it does the same thing, I'd suspect a bad hard drive or something.

I can't be sure, but I hope this helps you narrow it down a bit.

 

[milefile]

It wasn't a driver. And I reinstalled XP. I actually have to exchange the system. I bet it's a bad HD. Who cares. I'm getting a replacement.