I'm going to end up in a freaking mental institution if I can't get this figured out. Really. Microsoft paid support has no solution, and neither do any of my fairly knowledgable computer buddies. THE WHOLE STORY -XP starts to freeze on the splash screen. -A few days of expirementation go by trying to solve the problem and it ends up looking like hard drive failure. -I get new SATA drives and controller and rebuild my system. -Almost every time I connect a new peice of hardware, the freeze happens, but I end up getting around it usually by either restarting normally again, or entering safe mode then shutting down allows me to boot normally. -I finally get my system restored to its original glory (better, really) -I install CloneDVD2, in addition to the Roxio software that came with my DVD burner... DVD drives disappear from my system... i find an article on the Microsoft site about the situation and delete the "Upperfilter" and "LowerFilter" registry entries. My DVD drives are back -I install a utility to automatically shut down the thing at 3AM, after scheduled backups are performed -The first day after auto shutdown occurs, the thing will not boot period... freezes at splash screen or after "agp440.sys" is listed in safe mode -Calls to Microsoft's paid support line and to everyone else I know produce no results -On a whim, I unplug all USB cables from my computer and it boots perfectly... I reconnect all my USB stuff and it is all recognized A-OK -It shut down again last night, and this morning it would not boot... removed all USB cables and no result I am almost certain that I will get this hunk of junk to boot again. But if it takes me two days to get it back up every time it shuts down, it is useless. Unfortunately, I've pretty much made it the central brain of my whole life, so that's not acceptable. Please help keep this programmer out of a mental health facility....
To me it sounds like a Windows problem, though the fact that MS' helpdesk couldn't help doesn't surprise me in the slightest. If I had to guess I'd say you're running some combination of drivers and software that's causing a problem with your registry. The fact that the USB buss has some influence on whether or not the system starts properly would tend to support this theory. Of course, on rare occasion I've seen hardware problems manifest themselves in this way as well. Have you tested the RAM? If not, try running Memtest86+ overnight on your system. A single memory error is one too many, and that could certainly cause a whole swathe of strange problems. Also, what brand/model PSU does your system have? All the best, -AT
Unfortunately, my computer is one of these. Notice that it has ECC RAM... also, I ran a burn-in test a week or two ago and everything checked out. You can see on the PDF that it has a 250W Compaq power supply, which is probably crap. But I totally agree that it looks like a software problem. I get my computer to work regardless of USB configurations now. :swear:
Boy... this sure seemed to be a mystifying problem... I heard everything from so many different sources... you've got failing/inadequate hardware... you've got corrupted drivers... I don't have a clue... why don't you reformat and rebuild and end up in the exact same situation. Since I'm writing you from my PC right now and am 99% back in full glory, I thought I'd share the knowledge with you so you can help the next AFCC (average frustrated computer chump). I took out a USB board and started it up. No success. I took out another USB board and started it up... Safe mode. Shut down. Restart. Back in business. I'm obviously no hardware guru, but can someone NOW enlighten me on what may be causing this? I'd really like to have my USB/Firewire hubs back... but screw my printer, phone, camera, DVD burner, and wait... backup hard drive... no, no I guess I really need that. So this is obviously some kind of hardware conflict? I seem to remember something about IRQs being a possibility, but I could be dead wrong... what should I check?
I reinstalled one USB/Firewire card, and have had no problems since, so I'm relatively good to go. Nobody can tell me anything about possible reasons why the other USB card would cause a freeze? Hardware conflicts/IRQ wisdom anyone?
