Member Avatar for z0llie

my family has an older gateway computer. It has a 600Mhz AMD processor, and 192 megs of ram. A while back the harddrive broke(made this clicking noise when we turned it on) so we bought another HD and intalled everything fine, and it all worked great except for when we booted up it would hang on the message Checking NVRAM message before windows booted, but if we turned it off then on again it would boot fine. This being annoying, I searched around and found that people with the same problem reset their cmos to fix this, so i went ahead and did the same, except now when windows boots, the system locks up (including keyboard etc) at the windows logo screen. I can, however boot up into safe mode.

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For : booting to Safe Mode but freezing during a normal XP start—after you cleared the CMOS—points to either a driver/service that Safe Mode skips or a BIOS/drive setting that changed when the CMOS was reset. The steps below prioritize quick isolation (software first, since Safe Mode works) and safe checks of BIOS and the replacement drive.

  • From Safe Mode run msconfig and disable all non‑Microsoft services and all startup items, then reboot normally. If normal boot succeeds, re-enable items in small groups to find the offender.
  • Use F8 at boot to enable "Boot logging" (creates C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt). After the freeze, boot Safe Mode and inspect that file to see which drivers loaded before the hang.
  • Try "Last Known Good Configuration" (F8 menu). It can restore service/driver registry entries without reinstalling.
  • From Recovery Console or Safe Mode run disk checks and system file repair if suspected: 
chkdsk /p /r
sfc /scannow   (XP SFC may require the install CD)
  • In Safe Mode check Device Manager for display, disk controller, and recently added drivers. Roll back or uninstall suspect drivers (video and storage drivers are common culprits).

Hardware/BIOS checklist (after a CMOS clear these are common misses)

  • Re-enter BIOS defaults but confirm the hard drive is detected and that the boot order points to the correct drive.
  • If the drive is PATA (IDE), verify jumper positions (master/slave/cable select) and that the ribbon and power cables are firmly seated.
  • Reseat RAM modules and test one DIMM at a time; run MemTest86 if available.
  • If the original drive clicked and was replaced, run the replacement drive’s manufacturer diagnostics and keep a backup of important data.

If none of the above isolates the problem, a Repair Install of XP or a full reinstall may be required. Back up data first. For similar brief reports from and advice from , the same isolation steps apply.

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Member Avatar for peterbrown

HELPPPPPPPPPPPP,
I have a Presario 2500, just decided to stop; it stuck at the logo screen. please help

Member Avatar for caperjack

HELPPPPPPPPPPPP,
I have a Presario 2500, just decided to stop; it stuck at the logo screen. please help

hi,welcome to daniweb ,a little more info like like what Operating system you are running and if you installed any new hardware lately .a little history of what you were doing before it started doing this

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