Problem XP install

[garymc]

My computer (Microstar MB, 512m, Athlon 1200) began showing some problems in booting up (Would reach the scrolling horizontal bar showing windows XP loading then would "flash" showing an instant of blue screen then would reboot. At first it would do this two or three times then come up in XP. As I tried to figure it out it got worse until no boot period! I did a repair/install run of XP and it now boots up but with four issues

1. It will pause on the "loading windows" box until you hit enter a few times, then will finish.

2. It will load a few programs that are in the startup folder then sit without any icons on the desktop
for about three minutes then they will appear and it will finish startup.

3. A yellow exclamation point is by the line "Microsoft System Management BIOS DRIVER" (MSSMBIOS.SYS )
under System Devices in Device Manager

4. When shutting down it shuts down to a point, pausing at a black screen but doesn't "soft off". Have to shut down by holding power button down for 3 seconds to get a "hard shutdown".

I had installed SP2 on the orginal install but not yet on the re-install.

The system used to run pretty well so these are all new problems to me. This thing is about to wear me out!

Anyone have any ideas?

[Jarvis1906]

Originally posted by garymc
My computer (Microstar MB, 512m, Athlon 1200) began showing some problems in booting up (Would reach the scrolling horizontal bar showing windows XP loading then would "flash" showing an instant of blue screen then would reboot. At first it would do this two or three times then come up in XP. As I tried to figure it out it got worse until no boot period! I did a repair/install run of XP and it now boots up but with four issues

1. It will pause on the "loading windows" box until you hit enter a few times, then will finish.

2. It will load a few programs that are in the startup folder then sit without any icons on the desktop
for about three minutes then they will appear and it will finish startup.

3. A yellow exclamation point is by the line "Microsoft System Management BIOS DRIVER" (MSSMBIOS.SYS )
under System Devices in Device Manager

4. When shutting down it shuts down to a point, pausing at a black screen but doesn't "soft off". Have to shut down by holding power button down for 3 seconds to get a "hard shutdown".

I had installed SP2 on the orginal install but not yet on the re-install.

The system used to run pretty well so these are all new problems to me. This thing is about to wear me out!

Anyone have any ideas?

Maybe you should try a fresh install on a newly formatted drive.
Usually when you use the XP disk to make repairs, everything works more or less the same as a fresh install. Did you change/add any hardware or software prior to these symptoms occuring?

Jarvis Edwards - Purchasing & Operations Manager
jedwards@microtailors.com
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[wanderer]

This has all the signs of you need a bios update to be XP compatable. Make sure in the bios apci is enabled before you install XP. Otherwise install won't enumerate the registry entries required for shutdown, etc to work right.

[ThRoNkA]

ACPI might be the problem. Disable ACPI and do a reinstallation. Then re-enable it to make sure everything works.

[garymc]

Thanks for all the tips! The bios was ugraded about 3 mo. ago but I will check this out along with the other tips. I shall return.