Two major problems.

Hw/Sw is
Pentium D 3GHz, 2GMme, twin ata harddisks, nvidia 8600 display
XpPro + sp2
Using Zonealarm v7.0


Sequence of events is

1. Prelogon Bootup is fast
2. 3 out of 4 times I get the blue screen of death
3. Once I log on, there is a pause for several minutes
4. 3 out of 4 times I get teh same blue screen of death here.

What I have done
1. New motherboard
2. New Cpu
3. Additional fans
4. Up/Downgraded from 2000 (which was not slow but used to crash) to XP
5. Two different memory tests (running for 8hrs+) say memory is ok
6. ChkDsk and Seagate Disk Tools find nothing wrong with the hard disks
7. Every driver upgraded to latest version
8. Removed everything from startup that was not necessary
9. Removed all services that were not necessary

And I still cant decide whether its hardware or software.
1. bootvis refuses to give boot activity information
2. Eventlog is now clear except for a serialport complaint, I have removed the card
3. Every test takes hours to complete because of boot problems.


Any suggestions for either except for re-install.

Does it happen in safemode? What is the stop error message that you get?

Safemode always works.

Error is 7e/c0000005/805... I have googled it many times, consensus seems to be that its hardware.

My prime suspects are Zonealarm and Nvidia and lingering Win2k drivers.

Nvidia, I cant do much about.

Zonealarm, when I did remove it for testing, it still happened, possibly because it does not clean unintsall. And I got virused, so had to put it back on.

2kdrivers - I have compared all windows com,exe,dll and sys files with another Xppro, I cant spot any old ones. All my files are newer or same timestamp/version as the other machine.

A fresh copy of XP on a clean borrowed disk doesnt bluescreen. I have got too much installed, damn windows registry feature so I cant re-install without even more hardship. And there is no guarantee that it wont happen again.

See if this helps at all: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=330182&sd=RMVP

It turns out that the dratted thing wants a minimum virtual memory on the drive that windows is on. The minimum being memory+2M. I would love to throttle any Microsoft developer

I have 2G of memory and had 4G of virtual ram on a separate drive in its own partition. But thats not enough, some of it has to be on the drive with windows... in my case drive E.

No more blue screens. Now I can chase the entries in the event log which were causing windows to crash because it wanted this virtual memory to make memory dumps.

Thanks for the MS link. I didnt use it but would have if I had not found the above.

After the above I suddenly had a stack of errors in the event log. Once I fixed the permissions on teh registry entries, it now boots up with no errors, first time in years.

Still sloooow though

Hi,

A slow computer can have the folowing causes.

* Lack of maintenance (run Disk Cleanup, ScanDisk/Error Checking, Defrag)

You did chksdk but I don't know if you did the other stuff too.

* malware ( work through the MRP: http://wiki.castlecops.com/Malware_Removal_and_Prevention:_Overview )

May be worth checking that out.

Have you solved the problem with bootvis?

Greets, John.

Gotta love M$!

I regularly clean the registry and disk - and defrag both. I have also run adaware for years. And I periodically run something else (such as pest petrol or trend microcomputers) to keep adaware honest. The issue is with some driver.

So far, I cant coax bootvis to show boot activity. No matter what I do, it only shows Disk I/O, Disk Utilization and Process Creates, Other checkboxes are unticked, ticking them just shows blanks.

I have tried ticking them before Next Boot + Driver Delays. Yet the samething works on my pc at work.

Did you update the video driver as well? There is a procedure for doing those and if you don't do it that way, it can create problems.

1. Download and install Driver Cleaner from here:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745

2. Download the latest version of your video card's drivers.

3. Uninstall the video drivers using the Windows Add/Remove Control Panel.

4. Boot into Safe Mode and run Driver Cleaner, run it a couple of times until you are sure that all remnants of the old drivers are gone, and if you had other video cards installed at some time in the past, also run Driver Cleaner to get rid of them as well.

5. Boot into regular Windows and install your new video drivers.

6. Finally, reinstall DirectX from the redistributable download version from here:

http://filehippo.com/download_directx/

I had issues with the video driver earlier and NVidia asked me to do that some months ago, so it has been done. I havel also meticulously removed all traces of drivers of previous video cards, network cards, keyboard and mouse.

I can certainly try it again.

I have been re-reading this thread and consulting with my team members. You said above

Hardware was replaced after migration to XP.

I reinstalled the Nvidia Driver - decided to use the beta. It hasnt changed anything except the desktop manager is gone - I will chase that later.

Just to clarify... the initial boot is fast. I log in, there is a fraction of a second of hard disk access. Then there is a 2.5 minute pause of no activity and then all hell breaks loose. Shutdown is similar... the shutting down message disappears, there is a pause of 2+ minutes and then it shuts down.

Removing all USB devices and/or network cable before startup did not change anything.

I had bootvis optimise the boot files- no change.

I have tried deleting / not deleting the page file at shutdown - no change.

If only bootvis would display the activity, I would know what was wrong

Many experts recommend reinstalling the OS after a major hardware change. While it is not absolutely necessary, it may fix your boot issue. I think it is getting "confused" if you will and that is why you are getting that lag time.

A procedure called an in-place reinstall will replace your OS with a fresh copy, while leaving your data, programs, and most settings alone.

To do an "In-Place Reinstall" of Windows XP, follow these steps:

1. Insert your Windows XP Installer CD into your computer's CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart your computer.

2. When the "Press any key to boot from CD" message appears on the screen, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD. (Note Your computer must be configured to start from the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive.)

3. You will receive the following message on the Welcome to Setup screen that appears:

"This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft Windows XP to run on your computer:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.

To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3."

Press ENTER to set up Windows XP.

4. On the Windows XP Licensing Agreement screen, press F8 to agree to the license agreement.

5. This is a critical step, so be careful. Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP is selected in the box, and then press R to repair Windows XP. When the installer asks for your license key, use the one that came with your computer or Windows XP Home/Pro disc.

6. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to reinstall Windows XP. After you repair Windows XP, you may have to reactivate your copy of Windows XP.

7. After the "In-Place Reinstall" completes, you will have to do all Windows Updates, and possibly reinstall your video and sound card drivers, and maybe a few other drivers as well.

If you follow the instructions exactly, you will not lose any data, software or most settings.