Simple. While it could be a number of things, here what you should do which fixes things 80% of the time.
1.) Go into Safe Mode.
2.) Open up msconfig.exe.
3.) Disable every startup program you see by unchecking them (don't worry this doesn't delete it, you can always check it back later.)
4.) Open up a command prompt and run "chkdsk.exe /f" - this will run chkdsk next time.
--BTW: If you see A LOT of chkdsk errors - it probably means your hard drive is on it's way out and you need to stop using it and recover your data as soon as possible. If you're feeling edgy, you can boot into safe mode and manually copy files to a thumb drive. If you're lucky, you'll get most of your data. If you want to play it safe because you have data that is worht millions, I would stop everything and take the hard drive to a highly qualified data recovery company.
5.) If you know what you're doing (probably not
) you could also disable services, but then you could also really shoot yourself. You take limited risk however by disabling all NON-MICROSOFT services e.g. "realteck, norton etc.."
If that doesn't work.....
1.) Reboot into safe mode *w/ networking*. go to
http://safety.live.com and run a complete scan. BTW: Everyone should do that - we have the best scanners for malware in the world... It'll take at least 12 hours so do it overnight... However, I suspect safe mode doesn't support active-x controls so this may not work.. but it's worth a shot
2.) If that doesn't work, download the latest MS ANTI MALWARE application and Windows Defender. Run a scan with both. You may also want to install A REAL AV software that will probably cost you money from Norton, McAfee etc.. DON'T EVER INSTALL a 'FREE' virus-scanner from "WE WILL INSTALL SPYWARE AND VIRUSES HAHA SUCKER.COM" - read betweent the lines here.
3.) If that doesn't work, uninstall all non-essential applications. This essentially means EVERYTHING but Microsoft, trust me.
..
If that doesnt' work..you'll need to start throwing out hardware.
Start by..
1.) Uninstalling your video card from devmgmt.msc (device manager)
2.) Network card, sound card etc..
If any of that works, I just saved you hundres of dollars and invaluable data so you owe me
If it still doesn't work.. talk to me once you've done all these things over the next 3 days and we can go from there.
BTW: Is this XP SP3 with the latest updates or not? See if you can download the updates on a thumb drive and install them from safe mode...
