Windows 2000 freezes shortly after logon

[hussar]

I am looking for some help troubleshooting recurrent freezes that could be either software or hardware related.

A couple of months ago I upgraded the motherboard and CPU in my daughter's machine and used her old motherboard and CPU to build a machine for myself on which I installed a legally licensed copy of Windows 2000 Professional. The motherboard is an MSI ms6191 running an AMD 833 MHz CPU with 256M of RAM. I installed the applicable security and system updates from windowsupdate.microsoft.com immediately after getting online, and the machine says it is running Win2k Build 2195, Support Pack 4Free. Autoupdate is on. I also installed Folding@Home, and I left the machine running 24/7.

A week or so after doing the install, I had to restart to finish the install of some software (don't remember what), and the machine froze before even starting to boot into Win2k. After several unsuccessful attempts to boot, the machine remained frozen on boot right at the point where the BIOS identifies the CPU. I opened the box up and reset the CMOS jumper. While I was doing that, I realized how poorly ventilated the box was, so I added a fan that pulls in outside air through one of the drive bays. When I put the machine back together, it booted fine and ran for a couple of weeks without problems.

Several days ago, I came home to find that the machine had rebooted on its own and had hung at the Win2k startup screen - the one with the progress bar at the bottom. The progress bar showed approximately 1/2 to 2/3 complete. I assumed that it had auto-updated something that required a restart.

I tried to reboot with CTL+ALT+DEL, but the system did not respond to keyboard input. I hit the reset, and over a number of boot attempts, all I could get was a hang on at the same point on the startup screen. Since resetting CMOS had helped before, I changed the system battery and reset CMOS. That allowed me to boot, but only up to the login screen. I would log in, and the system would tell me that my password was due to expire, would I like to change it? Whether I clicked yes or no had no effect. The system would freeze immediately and there would be no response to the keyboard or mouse.

I am able to log in to the machine in safe mode and safe mode with networking, but it still freezes when I try to log in normally. While in safe mode, I defragged the drive, but that has only helped me get to the freeze point faster.

What can I do to figure out if this is a hardware or software problem? I think the fact that I can boot into safe mode would suggest a software problem, but I'd like to figure out how to rule out hardware problems. I have also heard that there is some log that I could read to see what was logged right before the freeze, but I don't know where that log is. You should also know that I have the machine connected to the monitor, mouse and keyboard with a KVM switch. Since I have a couple of other machines on the KVM switch which I can't shutdown right now, I have not been able to test the machine when it is directly connected to the monitor, mouse and keyboard. If I need to provide more information, please let me know.

Cheers,

hussar

[andsome]

[marquee=right]WELCOME to NP.[/marquee].

You are possibly here on the wrong day, someone will almost certainly be able to help, but Sundays are usually quiet.

[hussar]

The machine I am trying to fix isn't critically important to anything, so I can afford to be patient. I'd just rather not do a re-install if it can be avoided, and if it turns out to be a hardware problem, the re-install won't have helped anyway.

[CurlyWhirly]

You are possibly here on the wrong day, someone will almost certainly be able to help, but Sundays are usually quiet.

Andsome it's saturday today! :lol: