What could be the problem????

[UNE]

A friend of mine has a P-IV PC and has XP prof installed but every time he starts it, it boots properly up to the point of "loading personal settings" and then freezes up.. what could the problem be.. i have tried defragmenting, scandisk but didn’t do any good..

He says that when he bough it it was OK but it started doing so after some time,

I wanted to install SP2 do you think tha by doing so i can fix the problem or is there any other solution..

Its computer is:

PIV 2.4Mhz

512RAM

120HDD

etc..

he has no internet connection.. he also has McAfee anti-virus program

[lloyd]

do yu mean the computer can not start?
have you try the "last known good configration" model to start it?
if it works, then use the restore feature of the xp.
otherwise use the safe model to start it , then creat a new user, start it again and log in as the new user.

[UNE]

Yes it restarts...
it displys welcome screen and when it comes to the next stage of "loading personal settings" it freezes up and thyen to carry on you have i press ctrl+alt+del then it starts normally.. and i have disable all startup applications from MSCONFIG and install SP2 but stil it is doing the same thing.

[DMR]

As lloyd suggested, can you boot into Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking? If so, does the system seem stable in those modes?