Win XP Freeze during boot up

Trying to find the problem to a friends computer: The computer has Windows XP home edition and it gets slower and slower during boot up until it just freezes. They took it to some shop that said the CPU was over-heating b/c the fan in the back was backwards. they turned it around and charged them $60 and didn't bother checking to see if it was fixed. Its not, i took Knoppix to it, just to see if it was the hard drive that was bad, and knoppix runs alright for a while on it until it eventually it slows to the point of pretty much freezing. Its a fairly good computer, cant find the speed of anything yet but it has 512 mb of ram with cooling plates on them and all the fans are working properly. What else can i do to locate the problem?

This scan (if you can get online) will show what's inside:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Is this a new problem? Were things working OK previously? Any new hardware and or software?

If both XP (hard drive) and Knoppix (CD drive) are affected like this I would guess a heat issue.

A case fan blowing in or out would not be all that big of a deal although in general front fans intake and rear fans exhaust.

There are also fans on the PSU and the CPU and perhaps the Graphics Card.

You can run with the case open and observe the behavior. Just generally feeling the air for heat shifts.

Changing the thermal grease between the CPU and the heat sink might help if it is a CPU issue.

how do i install programs on it when i can't get past the boot up screen?
I put in a different hard drive with Win XP home edition and it gave me a screen saying it didn't start successfully, and i need to start it in safe mode or start as normal. When i click "as normal" i get a blue screen saying there was a problem and gave me the tech error:
***STOP: 0x00000007B (0xF894d528, 0xc0000034, 0x000000000, 0x000000000)

so im guessing its a heating / CPU error. Will "Thermal Paste" really make that much of a difference? Im also running it with an open case, so im pretty confused as to what it is now. The power settings are for 115 volts, should i increase it?

I tried to run hackthis! and some of those other programs during the boot up but nothing would work.

Is this a new problem? Were things working OK previously? Any new hardware and or software?

If you can't boot you can't run those scans. I just mentioned in case you could boot. You had mentioned that you could get in before it began to slow down.

You can not just put in another hard drive with another XP on it and boot.

0x0000007B: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

"Windows lost access to the system partition or boot volume during the startup process. Typical causes: Installing incorrect device drivers when installing or upgrading storage adapter hardware, or a virus."

In order to use a different hard drive you would need to reinstall XP onto it while it is on the motherboard.

If it is a heat issue it would be the CPU or Graphics Card or less likely the PSU.

So at this point what happens when you power on the computer?

Does the BIOS POST run? Does it just fail loading XP? Can you still boot Knoppix?

Can you boot your XP CD?

115 Volts is your house current (unless you are in Europe)

If you suspect heat then disassembling the CPU fan/heatsink/etc. would be good yes.

Clean it up and try new paste.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_s...structions.htm

http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm

http://www.techwatch.com.au/reviews/...thermal_paste/


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b/c im running it with an open case I don't think its a heat issue anymore. I can run it in safe mode ok, i ran spybot and really didn't get anything, so i don't think its a virus. also stopped a lot of auto run programs from running during startup.

reset bios on the motherboard and it didn't make any changes
bios reads the temp as find during startup (30c)
bios reads all of the RAM and doesn't report a problem

this next week im going to see if i can run all of its hardware components on a different CPU and motherboard. Hoping to isolate it too a bad motherboard or CPU. Im also going to take out the HDD's (there is 2) and run them as slave drives so i can virus scan them. ( i couldn't get them out before, didn't have the room to take the whole thing apart.) so mabe through that i can install those programs on it then.

ran it in safe mode again under a different user name, ran spy-bot, regestry cleaner, and ad-aware se. found a lot of cookies and bugs, but no real viruses. took both of the hard drives out and installed them on my computer as slave drives. i can explore through them with out a problem and McAfee virus scanner didn't find anything on them.

assuming:
>>HDD's are ok b/c i can navigate and take files and install files onto them
>> its not a virus b/c ad-aware, spy-bot, regestry clearner, and McAfee didn't find anything suspect
>> not RAM, I tested it with a bootable program and it tested fine.
>> not video card, works great with safe mode and videos i played in safe mode.
>> not heat, case is open, runs fine in safe mode.

for the first time i hooked speakers up to it, when it boots to the bios, before it loads windows it plays a recording "Mother board tested fine, loading operating system". can i assume that the motherboard and CPU are fine then too? So what am i overlooking?

Heat would not necessarily be solved by an open case. A failing CPU or Graphics Card could be creating a heat issue that goes beyond any cooling.

Running in Safe Mode would put very little load on the Graphics Card as well.

So I would agree that the drives and RAM are OK.

Have you tried the Graphics card in another computer or another card in the problem one?

Same for CPU?

What is the behavior now if you try to boot normally?

boots the same, i wanted to run system restore on it too see if any of the files were corrupted from say past heating issues. however the owner doesn't know the password to the op system. any forums i get on to see how to recover it are blocked. could you help me at all in recovering the password?

Reinstall XP. It would be a good test anyway to eliminate XP as a source of error.

I installed XP PRO and the machine now works fine...
my guess is this
-the computer did overheat and courrupted some of the system files
-my XP HOME ed i have is crap

...thats all i can guess. Im just happy it works now and I could get it out of my site. THanks for all the help and input you put in!!!