Windows Xp ahngs during Black boot screen

[rascough]

Hi,

I am having problems running windows XP Home,
I only get as far as the Black Loading screen, then hangs forever,

If i try and boot into safe mode it works fine, but safe moed with networking doesnt work either.

Prior to this problem another harddrive was put into the pc, to copy some files accross, this worked fine, and the harddrive has now been removed.
I am getting a message in safemode about xmasbus.sys, which i think belongs to Alcohol 120%

Could this be causing it?
Can i repair the startup from Safe Mode?



Thanks
Richard

[simbill]

inside safe mode go to start > run > type in "msconfig" without the quotes. now in General tab, check the "diagnostic startup" box, apply and reboot regularly. if that does not work do the same thing in safemode and this time check "Selective startup" box, then underneath it check "process win.ini file" and "process boot.ini file". reboot see if it works.

note: things will look wierd, as your services and startup will not be running, but that very well may be the problem.

if one of both seems to be the problem, you want to see if you can start taking off startup items off the msconfig "Startup" tab, but if you dont know what it is, dont get rid of it.

let me know how it turns out

[ultrasolve]

If simbill's solution doesn't help you, when in the system configuration utility, the box you get from entering msconfig.

Go to the Boot.ini tab and tick the boot options /bootlog and /sos the /sos switch will show what drivers are loading when you are booting up, the last one to show, should be the driver that is hanging the machine. The /bootlog will write a log of the bootup to a log file in the system directory so should also gove you a clue as to what is causing the hang.