Computer ?...When I restart my computer

[Lisa L from MI]

it won't start in the normal mode. It will only start in safe mode???....Then I have to shut it down totally for about an hour and when it starts, it takes FOREVER....probably a good 15 minutes...but it will finally start...but only when I let it sit for at least an hour........

Any suggestions to what may be wrong here???

I know I have a small processor (?)...Pentium 2 350 MGz
256 RAM
Windows 98
IE 6.0

Thanks
Lisa

 

[Beauty]

I've had that happen twice on two different computers. On the first one it crashed after about the 5th time it would only start in safe mode. It took about a week to have it fixed.

The second time it did it was on this computer. Its a Gateway Pentium 3. DH actually took the whole computer down....lost all my bookmarks/favorites/documents/ everything but when he brought it back up it worked fine, and has worked fine ever since.

I have no idea what causes it.

 

[lynxstch]

and it turned out that my hard drive was on it's last legs..sometimes it would start..sometimes it wouldn't..but one sure sign that the repairman told me..was when I tried to defrag..it would only go to a certain point and then freeze up..maybe you could try that and narrow it down?..good luck with whatever the problem is!
Lynn

 

[Lisa L from MI]

My hard drive is only a couple months old. I have no problem defragging too....

Wish there was a way to check if the hard drive is going bad before it totally crashes....

 

[jfulcer]

Don't have any advice for you right now except for


BACK UP YOUR IMPORTANT FILES

When you computer acts flaky, you never really know what's gonna happen. You have been warned.

 

[coqui]

Originally posted by Lisa L from MI
My hard drive is only a couple months old. I have no problem defragging too....

Wish there was a way to check if the hard drive is going bad before it totally crashes....

Run a thorough ScanDisk on it. See if it detects anything.

 

[Lisa L from MI]

Coqui....I have ran a thorough scan disk....and it detects no problems. If you could go over to the tech board and see what I posted there.....maybe you have some idea......I haven't heard an answer over there yet

Thanks
Lisa

 

[piratesmate]

"Safe Mode" is designed to allow you to at least boot your computer when something goes wrong. There could be a problem with one of the drivers for a card or with the actual component. Rather than not letting you boot at all, it shuts off stuff like the CD drive, the network card, the modem . . . . It "reduces" your video to a basic type - probably will only give you a resolution of 640x480x16 colors. (This means everything will be VERY large & the colors will look lousy!)

If you have the drivers for your sound, video, CD, etc I would suggest that you start by re-installing the drivers. If you don't know what that means, take it to someone who does.

At my job I had to reconfigure computers quite often because a driver got screwed up. There's not always a reason that this stuff happens - we used to say dumb stuff like "the moon is in the 7th house" or "must be the sun spots" to explain why it happens. Maybe there was a slight variation in the electrical current that caused the computer to alter a file. What I'm trying to say is that while it's a pain in the butt & seems like a big deal - it isn't necessarily an indicator that something is critically wrong.

Deb

 

[coqui]

After some thought and research this is what I have come up with.

Like what has already been said was that there is more than likely a driver conflict. I would go ahead and start out with your video card, you sound card, and if it isn't a normal 2 button (non-optical) mouse, then those drivers. Those seem to be the most conflicts.

If that doesn't work, then go ahead and update all your drivers. If that doesn't work, the only solution left is to format and reinstall. (also a good way to speed up the performance by getting rid of things cleanly that you don't use)

But before you do all of this, of course back up all of your files.

 

[LarryE]

Try removing IE6 it is notorious for killing machines that are running anything less than a pentium 3 or win xp.

 

[Tina]

You could press F8 during the bootup process. You'll get a menu and you can choose to bootup with step by step confirmation. Then you can watch and see where things go wrong.

 

[Pete's Mom]

From Safe Mode go into

My Computer
Control Panel
System
Click on the Device Manager tab

as see if you have any conflicts (i.e. exclamation points or red dots) next to any of the devices listed. You may need to update your drivers or reinstall your operating system.

Good luck!