Win XP SP3 Freezes at the Welcome Screen and.......

Dell Dimension 9150 (aka: XPS 400), Purchased 2006 Windows XP, SP3 (Installed 23OCT2010 Pentium D820, 4GB RAM SyncMaster @ 1920x1200 512MB GeForce 8800 GT 500 GB x2 SATA HDD Norton Security Suite, Version: 4.3.0.5 Micosoft Office 2007 I recently did a clean install of my operating system and the last week I noticed some freezie up while the system was booting. This occurs randomly from either cold boot or warm and usually stops at the Welcome screen. The HDD activity light stops for a full minute and then a litlle access followed by more and more untimately loading and ready to go in four to five minutes. If I launch Windows Explorer, I get a quick glance at the layout and then white screen for about two minutes before I get do anything. If I save a download and have to change the default loaction, another few minutes before I can do that. Printing makes me see red!!! The system was fine in fact, super-fast for about three weeks and this has been getting worse by the day. Backtracking on what happened when took me to my SP3 install. I removed it and reinstalled it without any effect. I am near starting over again but I know I'm overlooking something so I defer the the group that always comes through! Thanks in advance, ToMiBo

Hi ToMiBo.

Have you downloaded and installed all the drivers needed: Drivers & Downloads for XPS/Dimension 400/9150

Especially the Chipset and Video driver? I see there are a lot of choices for Video, including several for various TV capture cards. Do you have one?

Hello Ztruker and thank you for your help! I have downloaded and installed all the drivers including the Dell chipset for this model. The video driver was updated via Microsoft's Update utility and I do not have a video capture card. No errors or unknow device in my Device Manager but this raises a question regarding a firewire port I have in the front tied to card on a PCI slot. Don't know if it's working or not and I don't need it anyway. Anything else you can swuggest? ToMiBo

Go to Device Manager again and double click on your Display adapter, click on the Driver tab then then select Roll Back Driver to get rid of the one installed via MS Update, see if that makes a difference.

I get a dialog box: No driver files have been back up for this device If you are having problems with this device you should view the Troubleshooter information. Do you want to launch the Troubleshooter? Y/N I know this was updated by Microsoft. PS: Would a registry cleaner have eliminated the unused driver?

I don't think a registry cleaner would do that, but when did you run it? If it was about the same time the problem started happening then it is certainly suspect. Have you thought about doing a System Restore to before the problem started happening?

I ran the registry cleaner after the uninstall of SP3 and after I reinstalled SP3. System Restore never crossed my mind at any point as initially I was looking for hardware issues (overheating, proper seating of internals, cleaning, etc). I unplugged everything in the box and reseated the cables, power, RAM and cards but not the CPU. Once I was satisfied with the soundness of the PC, I focused my attention to the OS and that's where I am now.

Sounds like System Restore is what you should try next. Take it back to before the freezing started. Worth trying.

I tried System Restore but was unable to go back before the date I removed SP3 and reinstalled it so my freezing continues. I looked at my drivers once again (as you previously addressed) and focused on the Nvidia driver installed by Microsoft Updates. I went to the Nvidia website and ran the 'find my device' button and it found my card fine but could not determine the version so praying this might be the culprit, I downloaded and installed the latest driver after allowing the install to remove all previous drivers. Rebooting for the install to complete really didn't change much with the freezing. After all this, do you think I should move over to the Malware Forum to see if something may be lurking that Norton nor Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware can't find?

I think it's worth looking at possible malware. Here is some info on it:

Go to the Spyware / Malware / Virus Removal forum, read the info there and follow the posted directions. Once you receive a clean bill of health, come back here if you have any additional questions or concerns or it turns out not to be a malware problem.

Please be patient as that is a very busy area. If you do not receive a response in 3 days, post a message here: http://forums.whatthetech.com/What_Do_If_Y…ays_t78698.html

Thank you for your help! Let's close this topic for now. Happy Thanksgiving!

Happoy Thanksgiving to you and yours. We never close topics except for the malware forum, so if nothing shows up Re: malware, come back here to continue looking at this.