Vista Business stuck on boot

[kasavien]

Hi all

My dads computer loads fine most of the time but maybe once in 4 times it gets stuck on the loading screen that comes up before the login screen. The only way to get round this is to force a restart of the computer by holding down the power button then turning the computer back on. When it restarts it asks whether you would like to repair or start as normal. Both options work and it is possible to login and use the computer as normal, but if you choose repair the problem still occurs subsequently when turning the computer on.

Does anyone know what may be causing it to stick at the loading screen?

The computer is a dell vostro with c2d process, 2Gib ram.

Thanks

Andy

[dangel]

Have you tried looking the event viewer to see if there's any clues?

[kasavien]

I can't see anything that may have occured when the boot got stuck other than this

Unable to initialize the security package Kerberos for server side authentication. The data field contains the error number.

but looking at the microsoft support it said that this shouldn't have caused any problems

Edit: on the other hand other people appear to be experiencing similar problems with the same error so i'll investigate some more

[dangel]

So when you say loading screen:

1. bios
2. progress logo on black screen
3. black screen
4. vista ball
5. black screen
6. logon screen (with aurora background)

Where abouts?

[kasavien]

it gets stuck at 2

[dangel]

At a guess a driver then - but it could be any number of things. Can you ever get it to happen in safe mode (where it logs out the drivers being loaded as it boots) ?

[kasavien]

i haven't tried to be honest, i'm not familiar with vista so i don't know how to get it to boot in safe mode. I think the problem started after vista service pack 1 was installed, but there have also been problems with the intel graphics drivers where the resolution would be randomly reset to default. I'll download the intel graphics drivers update and see if that changes anything.

[dangel]

i haven't tried to be honest, i'm not familiar with vista so i don't know how to get it to boot in safe mode. I think the problem started after vista service pack 1 was installed, but there have also been problems with the intel graphics drivers where the resolution would be randomly reset to default. I'll download the intel graphics drivers update and see if that changes anything.

Sounds like a good plan if you're having issues elsewhere. keep tapping F8 just after the bios screen to see the boot options.