This is driving me nuts. I'm running a 1900+ Athlon XP w 512MB PC2100 Crucial memory, ATI all in Wonder 9800, SB Audigy Platinum, 60 & 20 GB Maxtor HD Adaptec 3100 USB 2.0 card WinXP Home. +400Watt Antec power supply added recently

When I cold boot the system it has been locking up at the Win XP splash screen repeated resets do no good for approx 45 min. removed USB 2.0 card and modem and the time it takes to become stabile is reduce but still there. Tried to run memtest86 but instead of running the program a series of 4 characters scroll down the screen when I reboot.

The ATI Video card is also new. I have also been experiencing some lockups in certain games. Kyodai is an example.

Any help would be appreciated

Try "system restore" to the last time you had a clean boot. If you cant bootup to get to it with everything loaded---try to get there in safe mode ---press F8 while booting up---you have XP Home try it --that might get you back in business.

THe boot problem seems to have moved to the welcome screen & instead of waiting 40 min to have a stable desktop, this morning it rebooted aprox 3 times (10 min) to obtain a stable desktop

When did the problem begin? Before or after the new Radeon card?

What video card did you have prior to the 9800? Were all drivers removed and new fresh drivers installed?

Any other system changes just prior to the problem arising, software or hardware?

Could be RAM. If you are using two sticks, try using one and switching them out.

Could be a hard drive problem. Download the MaxBlast utilities from the Maxtor website and run the hard drive tests from floppy.

Could be the new video card. Try reseating it a few times.

Could be loose connections, check them all.

Could be cables, try different IDE cables.

Could be heat. Can you get into the bios to check temps?

Could be software, although unlikely because of the problem just running memtest86 before Windows even becomes involved.

Last thought is malware. Are you running an updated anti-virus program, firewall, anti-trojan.

Is it stable enough when it does boot to run some scans?

Also, if possible go back to square one regarding your system's hardware configuration, which appears to be reinstalling the old power supply and old video card per your initial post's info, and see if the problem goes away.

If so, then replace the old PS with the Antec.
If the problem reoccurs, then the Antec PS may be defective.

If reinstalling the Antec does not cause the problem to come back, then replace the old video card with the ATI 9800.
If the problem comes back, then the 9800 may be defective.

The problem with the 30 to 45 min warmup still continues. The problem existed before the power supply, and as a matter of fact all additional changes in equipment were made after the problem began. I have had one person suggest that the problem is mother board related, power supply. I just don't know what to do, but I am fed up. As a side problem I added a 200 GB Maxtor drive. Twice I have installed win XP and all my devices and even used Drive Image 7 to make a backup of my system only to have it stop booting with a Missing hal.dll file which Itried to repair from MS support. Tried to restore from my Image disk but the it came up with a NTDLR is missing error. Reformated the drive got everything up and running then today hal.dll is missing or corrupt. Keep in mind I can still boot up on my old 60 GB Maxtor drive without a hitch, except for the warmup problem. I feel that it is a problem with the new drive. Any help would be appreciated needless to say I'm at my wits end. Ran powermax software from Maxtor. It found no problem with the drive any suggestions? Thanks

Twice I have installed win XP and all my devices and even used Drive Image 7 to make a backup of my system only to have it stop booting with a Missing hal.dll file which Itried to repair from MS support. Tried to restore from my Image disk but the it came up with a NTDLR is missing error. Reformated the drive got everything up and running then today hal.dll is missing or corrupt.

Almost any kind of boot problem will cause those errors...especially a drive that is having its settings/configuration changed.

If the drive is auto-typed try setting the parameters manually. if set manually, try auto.

Also check/replace the drive cable, make sure the jumpers are set correctly.......

Lastly.....swap the mobo battery, on the off chance it is not quite upt to par.

Check it for Bad Capacitors (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25482). that can cause a lot of weird problems...

Dunno if this would help but on the few occasions when I've restored with the Ghost image software I have, I still wound up doing a repair/install for Win XP to get back the necessary booting files.