Computer Locking Up During Boot

[E.Pope]

PLEASE HELP,

I own a MSI 865PE (478) mainboard with a p4 HT 3.2 chip. I am running windows XP pro. I was having some network issues and it was locking up every once in a while, during games and such, so i figured i'd reformat and reload windows. I did this and now it locks up during boot, right when i can see my desktop wallpaper and the cursor has the little "thinking" hour glass. It seems that if i begin moving my mouse at the "welcome to windows" then it doesn't lock up. It locks up completely not even ctrl, alt, del will help. i have to push the magic button on my case. Does this sound like a harddrive issue? any help is appreciated....
E.Pope

[rio_bugarin]

try booting in safe mode. see if the symptoms still show.

I doubt its a harddrive issue though. must be something else

[E.Pope]

The only hardware i installed was a linksys N adapter for my wireless internet. i don't see what that would have to do with anything. maybe i'll try reformating (again), could be something was corrupted. if i boot in safe mode and it still does it what does that mean? if i boot in safe mode and it does not do it what does that mean? seems like when i move the mouse and it boots ok, the music when windows opens kinda stutters, almost like a cd skipping. there any program that i could install that could help find the issue?
thanks E.Pope

[mjc]

When dealing with boot problems, they can usually be divided into two types...hardware related and software related.

Software related problems are often caused by mismatched drivers, malware, corrupted installs, etc. Safe Mode loads a bare minimum of drivers, in their most basic mode. It also prevents most items in the various startup locations from running. So it is a good way to check for software related problems...

While hardware problems often exhibit the same behavior in both normal and Safe modes...

From the additional info you have provided it is almost certainly a hardware problem. It may be something as simple as not having the proper motherboard drivers installed (did you install the motherboard drivers when you reinstall Windows)...or it could actually be that for some reason that your machine doesn't like the USB wireless card...have you removed the card? Does the problem still exist?

[Paul Komski]

If it boots in Safe Mode it can probably be fixed by messing around with the software and the causes get narrowed down. It is both a diagnostic process and a way of "getting back in" to access data and so on. The system boots with minimalistic drivers so certain functions will not work in safe mode.

WINDOWS SAFE MODE EXPLAINED (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1643)

[Whyzman]

Is this a wireless N PCI or USB adapter. I'm getting the impression that it's PCI... If so, I would suggest moving the adapter to a different PCI slot if available and see if the problem exits stage left...