DescentBB

Let me preface this by saying that I have little to no experience with the inner workings of XP or my hardware, so please try to bear with me.

For a long while now, I've been having issues with my system completely locking up and requiring a hard restart soon after logging into XP. I'm the only user on my PC, and I have my account password-protected, so XP automatically takes me to the standard login screen. After typing in my password, most of the time the system loads the desktop fine. Once in about every 5 or so logins, though, the system freezes several seconds after loading the desktop. It's not even noticeable at first, either; I'll be moving my mouse around, seeing the icons on the quick launch menu highlight, but when I go to click on one of them, on the Start menu, or on a desktop shortcut, the thing locks up. Just about all of the time, after a hard restart, it loads up fine, but once in a while, I might have to do it twice or even three times in a row. Also, on rare occasions, the thing locks up just after me hitting "Enter" after entering my password. Other than that, I'm experiencing little to no abnormal behavior with the system.

I did have an issue a few months ago with a critical system file being seemingly randomly deleted; inexperienced as I am, I was unable to use Windows Recovery, so I ended up re-installing XP over my existing partition, in order to preserve my files. As I'm sure you know, that was a mistake. None of my programs were working properly, and my user account was all borked, but the thing held together long enough for me to re-install some CD-burning software, back up all of my documents, and then do a full reformat and re-install. This freezing problem existed both before and after the reformat, although I'm almost positive it wasn't happening when I first got the system this summer; my memory isn't too good on that point, though.

TechPro tried to help me out over AIM; he looked at my registry and suggested disabling a few startup programs, but nothing worked. He also recommended upgrading just about every driver from the system from Dell's support site for my particular PC; however, even upgrading the BIOS (which went without a hitch) didn't solve the problem.

I know you're wondering about system specs, so here they are: a Dell Optiplex GX280 running XP Pro, a P4 3.0 ghz chip with H/T, 512 megs of RAM, an ATI Radeon X300 64 meg video card, and a Creative Soundblaster 24-bid sound card. If you need anything more in-depth, like about my motherboard for instance, and can tell me where to find out, I'll gladly do so. Right now, the only startup services I have running are the free version of ZoneAlarm, McAfee Virus Scan Enterprise 8.0 (provided by my school), and some Creative software that replaces the standard Windows volume control.

I know you're all saying, "It's a Dell;" yes, I realize that. It wouldn't be my first choice, but I don't yet have the technical knowledge/confidence to build my own system, and I got a pretty good deal on it through my college, so I went for it. Just to let you know, I'm a college freshman with absolutely no job, so unless it's absolutely necessary to the survival of the system, any hardware updates are out of the question. It runs well enough for what I need it, and I'm not willing to spend any substantial amount of money on it. I have finally decided, though, that this will be the last system I buy pre-made; next time, I'm taking the plunge and building my own, hopefully with a crap-load of help from the members of this forum. Anyway, I'm absolutely stumped on this one, and while it's only a minor inconvenience, it's enough of one to make me want to get it fixed, so any help that anyone can provide is greatly appreciated.

P.S. While this may or may not be related to the freezing problem, I'm also having an issue with Windows remembering my monitor settings. Most of the time, when I restart the system, the refresh rate defaults back to 60 hertz; I then have to change the settings around to get it back to 100. Also, while my monitor is a Dell M993s and I have repeatedly installed the drivers for it, Windows always reads it as "Default monitor," instead of the actual model. Along with this, it greys out the "show only refresh rates that this monitor supports," but even if I choose a higher refresh rate, the actual reading on the monitor never gets higher than 100 hertz. I recently upgraded to the latest Catalyst drivers, and while the situation resolved itself for a while (the monitor was read as a Dell M993s, and the refresh rate was saved), it has since returned to its annoying ways. (The monitor has a VGA cable, but it uses some sort of adapter to hook into the vid card. I can't remember the abbreviation for this, but it's the one with all of the metal prongs.) This problem is not original to the computer; it didn't happen at all before the reformat and even for a while after it. It's extremely annoying to turn on the thing and notice the screen flicker, not to mention having my right-hand scroll bars off the viewable window, until I change the refresh rate. Once again, if anyone could help, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Sounds like a video card issue. Try swapping out your video card and see if that helps. If not, grab memtest86 and run a full test.

Since I don't have anything to swap it with, that's kind of out of the question. What exactly is memtest86, and where can I find it?

Agree with DCrazy here. Most likely Video or RAM - and I'm picking video. RAM is more likely to fail during application install.

Put in another video card and test.

Use some imagination too:

Google for memtest86. Get the proggie, make the boot disk, and boot from it.

Go to your local PC retailer and explain your problem. Get them to lend you the cheapest nastiest AGP card they have.

Mobius, I don't have access to any PC stores. If the solution involves swapping a card, then I'm just going to live with the problem. Besides, I'm not planning on putting any more money into this system; I would be willing to start saving up money to eventually build my own system, but for right now I'm sticking with what I've got. I will try that memtest86, though.

Everything you have except the video card is perfectly fine. Hell it's even better than my Dimension 8300. You'd do great with just getting a new video card -- 256 MB of texture memory. Any other money would be wasted; it's still a bit too early to adopt 64-bit, and any money you spend on a new motherboard, RAM, etc. will be unnoticeable.

Save yourself some cash and try swapping out the video card. Any AGP card will do just for testing, or you could even use a PCI card. That machine will be good for the next 2 or 3 years.

As I keep saying, though, I don't have any access to any other video cards. I don't even have a PC store to go to near here; I'm at college right now. I was hoping it would be some sort of software issue at startup. I'm glad to hear that I could upgrade my card; I wasn't sure if Dells were capable of getting any card thrown into them. I'm also glad to hear that my system is comaratively good; I just wish it had a gameport, so that I could keep using my beloved 3DPro. Oh well; I'll have to live with it for the present, at least.

Don't you go to University of Maryland?

Nope, University of Delaware.

Bah. How long could it possibly take to get out of Delaware? Five minutes? Ten?

Get yourself to a friend's dorm and borrow their video card for a few minutes.

You're right, but with no car and no license, it's kind of hard to get anywhere. I'd also like to see the expression on some of my friends' faces if I asked them, "Could I borrow your video card?" Just forget about it, then. I was toying around with the idea of upgrading the card anyway and throwing it in my family's PC, which has an ancient GeForce 2 32 meg card; obviously, if it turns out it is defective, they're stuck with the old card. I can't exactly take theirs, either, since it would be difficult to use their PC without one. At any rate, I'm curious as to how a video card issue could create a freeze upon logging into Windows in the first place. If there was such a problem, wouldn't it manifest itself by the login screen, or even earlier during the loading process?

Edit: Now that I'm thinking about it, this machine just might have some sort of integrated video. I'm not very sure on this point, however. How would I go about confirming this, and if it turned out to be true, would simply removing the Radeon and letting the integrated card handle the process be enough to test the problem?

The video card will only lock up the machine if something triggers the specific part of the card that's defective. For example, it might not start using the bit of video RAM that's faulty until Windows starts drawing the desktop. There are a myriad of ways the card can cause the machine to crash at a specific point.

All you have to do is stop using the Radeon in order to see if the Radeon is the problem. According to Dell's site, The GX280's motherboard ships with integrated video (not surprising since all Dells use the same Intel motherboard); disconnect the Radeon and reboot the machine with the monitor connected to the integrated video out.

All right, I'll give that a try. The problem is, I'll have to keep restarting it over and over, since the freezing issue doesn't occur with every startup.

Also, would a bad video card explain the problem about the system not remembering the monitor type/refresh rate settings? Or would that be some sort of software/driver issue? I have updated both the monitor's and the vid card's drivers, but nothing changed.

If it causes the monitor to always show up as "Default Monitor" then yes.