[spotila]

Ok, so here's what happened.

No problems what-so-ever for weeks, formatted reasonably recently. Decided my fans were too noisy, so I shutdown, dabbed a little Vaseline inside the noisiest one, all happy. Boot back up, and it gets the the windows loading screen with the little bar going across. Hangs there for 3, 4 maybe 5 minutes, and then finally gets into Windows and runs fine.

No explanation is really given, Windows runs fine once it gets past that screen, and no other problems are evident (except the fans didn't get any quieter lol).

Any ideas as to why I'm getting this random hang would be appreciated.

Cheers
Paul

 

[speedster123]

Did you dislodge a stick of ram? Retrace your steps.

 

[agentRed]

You could try disabling the windows startup screen, if speedster's idea doesn't work. It's very simple to do this.

1. Press Start

2. Go to Run

3. Type "MSNCONFIG"

4. Press Run/Ok

5. Goto the BOOT.INI tab at the top of the window named "System Configuration Utility"

6. Check the box labled /NOGUIBOOT

7. Press OK at the bottom of the window.

8. Restart

That may work. It won't do any damage to your system, all it will do is remove the Windows Logo Screen with the loading bar (you will see a black screen instead, blank, don't be alarmed). Consequently, your system will boot faster anyway, even if it did not have the problem with hanging up.

Second idea is to clear your desktop completely, if there are a lot of icons (especially games) it causes the system to have to preload those items so that they will appear on startup.

Last idea is to run a Hard Drive scanner/utility and Defragment. There could be a fragmented file that windows is trying to look for on startup and is having a hard time finding it. It could also be that there is a bad section on your Hard Drive and it's hanging at that critical spot, trying to read it but it can't; kind of like when a CD has a scratch on it and it starts skipping inside the player.


A note about the fan(s) and Vaseline: The properties of Vaseline (aka Petroleum Jelly) cause it to be extremely detrimental to plastics. At first, it will lubricate the fan but after a while, the Vaseline will cause the plastic to become brittle and pitted. Not to mention that putting something like vaseline into your computer at all is a very bad idea, especially into a fan where it could become dislodged and the fan would sling the Vaseline all into your system where it could very easily cause a short on your motherboard or other sensitive connection. You may want to check that that has not already happened.

Anyway, good luck, and I hope that I helped, if even just a small amount,
-agentRed

 

[spotila]

the issue seemed to fix itself, computers are so touchy >_<

oh, and I will use grease from now on ;x

 

[agentRed]

I would not reccomend putting anything into your fans. The only thing that I can think of that would be safe to put INTO the fan or even near your computer is wax. Wax would probably be okay to put into your fans to make them be quiet.