Strange WindowsXP Pro boot problems

epoxy5

epoxy5

epoxy5

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Joined
30 Jun 2004
Posts
247
Hello all..

Hope someone can help me with some recent problems I haven't been able to solve myself yet.

A couple of months ago I changed from an Intel computer to an AMD computer, and while perfomance in games and other applications have been great, I feel I got more stability problems and odd Windows behaviour.

The most annoying right now, is turtle speed boot, cold boot always takes ages - anywhere from 40secs to well over a minute or two. Booting up to the Windows boot screen flies, but when the black screen starts (with the moving blue bar) everything is slow. It can take 50 rounds, freeze for a short period, run a little more and either go into windows or I have to restart the computer once more, funny thing is that it boots within seconds after such a restart?

Stuff I have tried to do:

1 - Updated hardware drivers.
2 - Frequent run of diskfrag tool (Diskeeper)
3 - Frequent run of Spybot and Adaware (also always updated)
4 - Downloaded all win updates
5 - Removed a lot of running processes (according to various tweak resources)
6 - Cleaned computer for cookies and bad regs with Crap Cleaner
7 - Scanned for virus a lot of times with Avast
8 - Tried all sorts of settings in bios
9 - Tried Bootvis performance tool - no help, and it gives me errors when it tries to load the .bin file after a trace, so I can't see what is going on. I get the following error when trying to load the .bin file: Number of physical drives=0, tracefile got invalid system configuration.

But when it works it flies - playing FEAR, CONDEMNED, OBLIVION etc with no problems..

Hardware see sig.

Any ideas?
 
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I don't have any cards in my computer besides gfx card... Tried with only one ram module - same issues.

I did a check in the admin log book, and found many errors and warnings in the system and program log section.

A lot were refering to:

1 - Disk warning on HD 0 / D - an error occured while paging
2 - Error for the service driver parallelle - could not start because port is missing or disabled (I have it disabled in bios)
3 - Some dhcp errors as well about not being able to reniew
 
Well the program apparently did fix a lot of problems, and for a second I thought it was a done deal.

But problem still there....

Restart from Windows - faaaast, shutdown and then cold boot - slooow.

Perhaps I should try a repair install, and see if that solves anything?
 
Yeah I did re-format when I installed the new components..

Oh well here is the situation right now. I did try a repair install, and it went ok for a little while, but during the operation, it suddenly stopped the progress and the loading bar kept running and running but no progress at all.

Tried re-starting a couple of times, Windows tried to progress with the repair but at the same place in the process, the above happend.

After a couple of times, it never made it to the install screen and just kept restarting the computer.

So perhaps there was a faulty section on the hard drive?

Anyways installed a new hard disk, and installed Windows XP, with the joy of 50 critical updates, a phone activation of Windows taking a little hour, talking to a non native support - god I hate paid for retail software.... so time consuming.

But now that Windows is back onto a clean new hard disk, I have a couple of questions, and I hope I can get some help.

Lets say that the two old spare hard drives work ok, and only a few files are corrupted, are there any chances of me retrieving the following from the old Windows:

1 - E-mails and mail folders

2 - Firefox bookmarks

3 - Outlook contact book

If it is possible I would be happy if you could tell me how or at least point me to a link or a guide that could help me.

Thanks in advance.
 
Should be fairly routine to retrieve these files from your user profile on your old disk, providing there is no file system damage.

Firefox bookmarks are in C:\Documents and Settings\"your user name"\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\Random-name\

You should be able to just drag and drop these into the corresponding location on your new drive.

Similarly Outlook contacts and email are in

C:\Documents and Settings\"your user name"\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

in a series of pst files.

Unfortunately you can't just drag and drop these- they have to be imported into your New Outlook install and the account settings are stored separately and are difficult to import/ drag and drop, although some people have had success with the settings transfer wizard.

GL and HF :)
 
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