Interesting problem from my housemate.

[Moby-Dick]

Hi,

I’m having a few issues with a system that I have built and I was hoping someone maybe able to help as I’m a bit stumped.

The system is:

P4EE 3.8Ghz
2Gb DDR2 800
Asrock G31 mATX board
Nvidia 8800GT 512Mb
320Gb sata HD
Win 7 32 ultimate

The user has had a few malware probs and I have sorted this with Malwarebytes and a few other progs and it was working fine….

Now it will not boot straight into windows when it’s first powered on that day but just stays on the “starting widows” screen, it doesn’t hang but just doesn’t go any further than that.

If you boot into safe mode first, then restart the machine it reboots straight into windows without any fuss and works as normal.

I have verified the system files using sfc /scannow and that checks out o.k. and the system is now free from any nasty programmes.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what’s causing this?

any suggestions ? I've not had to use the safemode trick since windows 95.

[oolon]

Use memtest86 to give the memory a good test. Try testing the computer with only one Dimm installed. I had a P4 where the memory did work right in dual channel mode.

[kalniel]

Any power sucking devices like USB attached? Sounds like a cold boot problem though it's hanging at an odd point, like when the driver for something is loaded but the device itself isn't ready or isn't happy following a cold boot.

Aside from USBs, could be a flaky networking device or hard drive. Reseat all cables, check for bios and device driver updates.

[Moby-Dick]

as you say its the cold boot that is the curveball on it. I dont think a reset form a hung state works either.

[chuckskull]

Weird one. I think kal's on the right track, something peripheral is causing that I'd say. Another option, it could be something nasty trying to reinstall itself and somehow failing/tripping up perhaps?

If it started only since removing the malware, I'd be very tempted to say something got left over. Maybe not enough for the malware to be functional but enough to break the computer.

[[GSV]Trig]

Safe mode, msconfig, hide all the microsoft services and disable everything else, make sure everything not needed is unplugged too.

[Paul_s13]

Ohh I remembered my login!

Cheers Moby for posting my initial query.

Thanks all for the responses,

There’s only a USB mouse attached and the keyboard is PS2, I was thinking maybe it’s something silly like the floppy drive not disabled in the bios or similar so will disable that when I get a chance to look at the PC.

The memory was replaced with new 2 x 1gb DIMMS and MEMTEST ran and found no issues.

After the malware was removed the PC was fine, I ran prime95 on it for a couple of hours and ran 3D mark on it for over 24 hours without any trip ups.

All the drivers are up to date and there are no bios updates as yet for that board, I have also used msconfig to check that there are any unnecessary programs in the startup.


Cheers

Paul

[fedor]

If you have rescue disk for this comp than try to boot from this CD/DVD