Start up from cold problem

[Alex]

Hi everyone

I'm currently experiencing the following problems when I
switch no my PC and was wondering if someone could give me
any hints & help to what I should be looking at to solve
the problem:

Switch On PC from cold
No signal to the monitor but the PC appears to be going
through the boot up sequence (i.e. drive light up one at a
time, hard drive actives).

Restart 1
Motherboard splash screen appears on the monitor and
system hangs (pressing the DEL button does not enter bios
setup)

Restart 2
Motherboard splash screen appears, PC hangs but this time
the DEL key allows you to enter the bios settings. Check
the bios settings to find they have changed, not always,
the same changes but it appears that RAID and Boot
settings are affected the most. Change the settings and
Exit.

Restart 3
Splash screen appears followed by, safe mode selection
screen. Sometimes, choosing start in Safe Mode or Start
Normally will work and windows will start, and once
started I can restart the PC as many times as like without
any problems.

However, what's happening now is from the safe mode
selection screen it tries to boot windows and then
displays a blue screen stating that there has been a fatal
driver conflict and the system freezes.

Restart 4
After the system freeze the PC boots to the safe mode
selection screen and freezes as soon as I select an
option. Even if I wait for the timer to hit zero it
freezes, that's where I got stuck.



Background history:
The PC is just over a year old and has been working
trouble free up to this point, no new hardware has been
installed since I built the PC (so not sure how I can have
a driver conflict now). The latest software was installed
last November (Office 2003 and Studio MX 2004).

Operating system is Windows XP Pro with SP1
Motherboard is an Asus P4C800 Deluxe
Graphics card is Asus V9560 Videosuite
Memory = 2Gb of DDR 270 Ram
Hard Drive is a 200Gb Diamond Max9
1 Samsung DVD drive
1 Samsung DVD/ CDRW drive
1 Sony DRU500A DVD rewriter

As I said earlier, all I need is hints to what the problem
might be (hardware, software etc) I don't expect an
outright solution.

Hope someone can point me in the right direction

Many thanks in advance

Alex

[Mary Sauer]

There is an update for your motherboard here, has a 02/11/04 time stamp.
http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/selectftp.aspx?l1_id=1&l2_id=15&l3_id=20&m_id=1&f_name=P4C81015.zip~zaqwedc

--
Mary Sauer MS MVP
http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/
http://www.mvps.org/msauer/getting_started.htm
news://msnews.microsoft.com
"Alex" > wrote in message
...
> Hi everyone
>
> I'm currently experiencing the following problems when I
> switch no my PC and was wondering if someone could give me
> any hints & help to what I should be looking at to solve
> the problem:
>
> Switch On PC from cold
> No signal to the monitor but the PC appears to be going
> through the boot up sequence (i.e. drive light up one at a
> time, hard drive actives).
>
> Restart 1
> Motherboard splash screen appears on the monitor and
> system hangs (pressing the DEL button does not enter bios
> setup)
>
> Restart 2
> Motherboard splash screen appears, PC hangs but this time
> the DEL key allows you to enter the bios settings. Check
> the bios settings to find they have changed, not always,
> the same changes but it appears that RAID and Boot
> settings are affected the most. Change the settings and
> Exit.
>
> Restart 3
> Splash screen appears followed by, safe mode selection
> screen. Sometimes, choosing start in Safe Mode or Start
> Normally will work and windows will start, and once
> started I can restart the PC as many times as like without
> any problems.
>
> However, what's happening now is from the safe mode
> selection screen it tries to boot windows and then
> displays a blue screen stating that there has been a fatal
> driver conflict and the system freezes.
>
> Restart 4
> After the system freeze the PC boots to the safe mode
> selection screen and freezes as soon as I select an
> option. Even if I wait for the timer to hit zero it
> freezes, that's where I got stuck.
>
>
>
> Background history:
> The PC is just over a year old and has been working
> trouble free up to this point, no new hardware has been
> installed since I built the PC (so not sure how I can have
> a driver conflict now). The latest software was installed
> last November (Office 2003 and Studio MX 2004).
>
> Operating system is Windows XP Pro with SP1
> Motherboard is an Asus P4C800 Deluxe
> Graphics card is Asus V9560 Videosuite
> Memory = 2Gb of DDR 270 Ram
> Hard Drive is a 200Gb Diamond Max9
> 1 Samsung DVD drive
> 1 Samsung DVD/ CDRW drive
> 1 Sony DRU500A DVD rewriter
>
> As I said earlier, all I need is hints to what the problem
> might be (hardware, software etc) I don't expect an
> outright solution.
>
> Hope someone can point me in the right direction
>
> Many thanks in advance
>
> Alex