Freezing problem

[TFLeonard]

I am at my wits end and hope someone can help.

I loaded my PC with a fresh copy of XP (hard disk wiped, new partition, nothing loaded in terms of programs other than what the initial installation did). Now I've got a real problem: seems that whenever I go into XP the PC will freeze up forcing a cold reboot. This happens consistently after about 1 minute. I have no problems in Safe mode. Total freeze ups make me think I might have a hardware problem, but I would think the freeze ups would continue in Safe mode - they don't.

The PC is an old Gateway Select with an AMD processor, 256mb RAM and 20gb HD. It was running XP for at least two years without a problem. BIOS on the motherboard was updated about 2 weeks ago (AWARD BIOS), and while the BIOS upgrade allowed me to use the mouse plugged into the mouse port (previously that didn't work so I used a USB mouse instead), I wasn't able to shutdown properly. The BIOS vendor told me I had to reload WINXP to get APM to work so here I am - stuck.

[snowmonkey]

TFLeonard, it's not that I have the solution,, but I just wanted to say this: if your hard ware does not give you any problem in safe mode then you have to question what is the difference between the safe mode and normal mode ? in normal mode,,all the drivers are loaded where as in safe mode only few driver are active .... so I would think your issue is software related not hard ware...



cheers

[Grendel]

There is NOTHING installed besides Widows XP?

Unplug any USB devices and try normal mode.

If it works in Safe Mode it is likely a device driver issue, and not software; as you say there is no software installed.
Update all your device drivers.

In Safe Mode some drivers do not load for certain devices, and for others different drivers load.

And since you did a clean install, and you say you have no other software installed, before you go online enable the Windows fireall.
The reason being, without a firewall or security update KB823980 you can get the Blaster Worm.

[TFLeonard]

I tend to agree with your replies since the system does work in safe mode.

To follow this theory I tried using MSCONFIG to do a diagnostic startup (in theory that should not load any drivers or services). Unfortunately when I reboot in Normal mode the freeze up happens faster. I'm assuming that that means the culprit simply gets loaded faster since any driver/services that would no load ahead of it are disabled.

I'm stuck now since, I can't disable more with MSCONFIG since its at its most basic setting.

One thing that worries me is that we might be getting fooled that its a software problem when its really a hardware failure and the software that is freezing, is failing because its accessing the bad hardware. I wish there was some diagnostic software that would help answer whether this is indeed a flaky hardware problem (any suggestions?).

Also does anyone know specifically what does not get loaded in Safe mode? Perhaps I could set the system up to load in Normal mode LIKE Safe mode. That way I'd have at least a stable system to diagnose.