i'm having a windows startup issue on my desktop

i was about to shut the pc down and went to hit the power button to wake it up - but as i was pushing it, i realized that it wasn't asleep, so i actually sent it into hibernation by mistake... afterwards, i push the power button again to wake it / turn it back on and now it just loops through the startup and comes to a screen where i can start up in "safe mode" , "safe mode w/ networking" , etc... then options for starting up normally and also from the last known configuration (something like that)... no matter which option i select, it acts like it's restarting

one difference b/t the options is that if i try to start in safe mode, it just immediately attempts to restart and if i select "start normally" it very briefly flashes the windows xp logo and then starts the loop over

i haven't made any hardware or software changes recently and it started from hibernation normally this morning - the only difference is that i never usually hit the power button for it to hibernate (it just does it after xx min. idle)

any help would be greatly appreciated... sorry for all the words

it's an old sony desktop fwiw... i get the sony logo screen, the pentium 4 screen, then the selection for startup screen

btw... i'm asking first, google-ing second

[Edited on August 23, 2008 at 4:09 PM. Reason : google]

[Edited on August 23, 2008 at 4:15 PM. Reason : .]

8/23/2008 4:08:10 PM

well, i can tell that everyone is interested in an update (with the many responses and all)

turns out that it was a bad 512 MB memory stick - i ran a memtest with an ubuntu cd and got thousands or errors

computer is about 4.5 yrs old anyways...

how long can mobos of this age continue to last? (i was worried it was that after trying a few memory stick combos to no avail) - i was thinkin it was time for an upgrade anyways, but i'm cheap and thought i'd hold on to this one as long as possible

8/25/2008 5:26:03 PM

i bet it's the memory.

8/25/2008 6:24:16 PM

wow... thanks

8/26/2008 8:17:20 AM

Next time, try hitting F8 during boot and choose "DISABLE RESTART AFTER ERROR"



The BSOD may give you a clue.


But yeah, since the problem is already fixed, you'll have to wait for next time.

8/26/2008 8:31:57 AM

yeah, didn't know about the F8 thing... but i didn't have a BSOD

8/26/2008 9:30:42 AM