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When I start up my computer it goes through the start up screens and after the XP screen with the bar that has a blue thing going back an forth, it locks up with the screen gray, the mouse cursor on the screen but disabled and the hard drive lite on. If I do a soft reboot, it will boot correctly.....I thought at first I had a software problem, but when I took out my XP disc, I see that there is a chunch of stuff (looks like super glue) on it...thanks 5 oclock computers....then I thought it might be a hard drive going bad...I have an 80G raid hard drive as master....

Any thots??????

Can you try this for me:

As you boot, tap the F8 key repeatedly until you get to the "safe-mode" menu. Select "last known configuration" and let Windows boot. When it has successfully gone into Windows, shutdown and see if your problem re-occurs.

sorry it took so long, but my keyboard doesn't use the standard keyboard port, so I had to go borrow a keyboard from one of the IM techs at work.

Plugged it in, pressed F-8 during start up and told it to boot up using the last known good configuration. It started to boot up got to just before it goes into windows and froze. Hit the soft reboot key and it booted up properly. Tried another boot up and in booted OK. Since it only does it when it is cold, could I have a problem with my hard drive? If I replace it, what should i buy?

Was talking to my wife on the way to town and she tells me that she was using the computer during a lightning storm and that we had a power outage that was due to a strike on one of the power lines. Hmmmm, maybe not the operating system at all.

Hi Cyber_hawke,

It could be possible that your disk may have been damaged or, (hopefully) there are just a couple bad sectors.

Try running a scan disk through your recovery console.

Pop your XP CD in and boot from CDRom and press any key when prompted to.

Press R to enter the recovery console as soon as you are prompted to.

Once in the recovery console (you may have to input the Admin. Password if there is none than just hit enter) type CHKDSK and hit enter.