First off, I blame myself for this one. But in my defense, our computers are all on the same circuit (independent of the rest of the house) on UPS backup and decent surge protection. Mainly due to we have 4 computers and a laptop in the house. (1 work computer, 1 play computer, 1 "family' computer, 1 that is just my daughters, and the laptop).

I went to bed about 3am last night, just as some storms were getting bad here. Normally, I remember to turn off the circuit to the computers when the storms are rough. This time, unfortuantely I forgot to do so, and our Windows XP computer (the "Have fun while working" computer) was left on.

Our XP computer is set to stay off after a power failure.

This morning I came down, booted everything up. Everything is normal except for the XP machine.

That one... it gets into Windows just fine. Then after a few seconds the screen gets really weird, the keyboard is unresponsive, as is the mouse. You can't make out what is on the screen, but ctrl-alt-delete does nothing, and doesn't even make the cpu twirl like normal. the system just stops at that point.

Booting the computer up in safe mode works. I removed the last few things installed on there, and changed the video from the card back to the on-board. Same issue.

CHKDSK found nothing.

I am running:
HP Pavilion Intel Celeron 2.20
2gb ram
GeForce FX 5500 heavily overclocked

Anyone have any ideas other then "reformat and reinstall"? As of right now, while i can get into safe mode, i can't access the internet from it, and can't see anything wrong.

Anything I overlooked?
Thanks in advance!

try this:
Boot to Safe mode and Run

sfc /scannow

You may also want to try a system restore

system restore didn't work - i went back first a few days, then a month. Same problem.

Safe mode still works, so it has to be something with either a service or a startup application. I'm going through the lists now.

Hi
Reset the cmos for a hour or so and start the pc up.see if that's of any help

Cheers

I reset the CMOS, no luck.

Finally got it working though. Here is what i found:
Somehow (i will not pretend to know how this could of happened) the cooling fan had charred wiring and a little melted plastic. I removed the fan, put in a new stock fan. There was some melted plastic on part of the motherboard, away from the components but pretty close to the ram. I cleaned it up, air-dusted the entire thing, rebooted, and the computer came up splendidly.

Well done.
Please mark as solved

Have a great day
Cheers